Two Chairs, Not One
2023 · 12m
Directed by Austin Kolodney
A disgruntled customer confronts a furniture salesman whom she believes should have shipped her two chairs, not one.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
On paper this is a customer-service complaint—the most anodyne premise possible—but Kolodney somehow mines genuine absurdist dread from a furniture dispute; it's like watching someone's entire sense of reality fracture over logistics.
A deceptively simple two-hander that recalls the formal precision of mid-century comedic shorts, structured with the care of someone who understands that restraint and a single location demand exactitude in every beat.
The entire film hinges on the exact moment the salesman's certainty cracks—a micro-performance choice that reframes whether we're watching a comedy or a tragedy—and Kolodney commits fully to that ambiguity with nothing but two chairs and time.
Reviews
Die Protagonistin im Kurzfilm „Two Chairs, Not One“ lässt so eine Fehllieferung aber nicht auf sich sitzen und versucht alles in ihrer Macht stehende, um Gerechtigkeit herzustellen. Ein etwas anderes Drama von Austin Kolodney.