Your Man
2019 · 10m · USA
Directed by Alley Leinweber
Genres: dark comedy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
Fed up with her dating prospects, Jess invites a nice guy from work over for dinner, only to find out he's even more problematic than the others. A stylized dark comedy about a young woman enduring a thirsty man's 'sweetness.'
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Most 'nice guy' shorts let the bad date off easy. This one corners him at the dinner table and turns the lighting up. Yes please.
Weaponizing the 'nice guy' dating trope by giving him a stage and watching the niceness curdle is a sharp idea that risks becoming the very thing it satirizes if it's not careful. The Shiva Baby comparison is generous; I'd want to see whether Leinweber earns it.
"Nice guy" given a dinner-table stage to curdle in real time is a tight little chamber piece — stylization tilting the dinner into theater is a smart formal answer to the social discomfort. Apt subject for a dark-comedy short.