From Omeleto.
Two sisters compete for attention.
HICKEY is used with permission from Giovanna Molina. Learn more at https://giovanna-molina.com.
Grace is growing up with her sisters in a strict evangelical community under the watchful and stern guidance of their father. One day, Grace discovers a hickey on her older sister Kit’s neck, which gives rise to a sense of judgment and anger on Grace’s part.
The discovery, along with a "purity ball" looming on the horizon, portends a larger spark of rebellion in Kit, who questions her community’s insistence on purity. But when their father decides Grace will take Kit’s place at the ball, the choice sparks a rivalry between the sisters that may crack open their quiet, careful life.
Directed and written by Giovanna Molina, this hushed but powerful short coming-of-age drama has an idyllic visual grace, with a poetic eye that captures the small details and textures of the sisters’ lives. The remoteness of their home, the worn-in fabrics of their clothes, and their simple enjoyment of their trampoline: these images capture a sense of innocence and girlhood. But underneath that placidity, a more troubling psychological storm is brewing and much of the film’s haunting power comes from how it slowly peels back this surface to reveal much uglier truths.
The storytelling’s momentum is built gently at first, as small details and discoveries accumulate, beginning with Grace’s discovery of Kit’s hickey and embellished with restrained but evocative scenes of the evangelical community around them. Actor Chloe Carroll as Grace subtly conveys her initial judgment and anger at Kit, which emerge from a deeper sense of jealousy. Grace feels constantly sidestepped by their father in favor of Kit, despite Kit’s transgressions, and she yearns to earn love and approval.
Grace does this partly by embracing her culture’s tenets wholly, which is a marked contrast to Kit’s growing skepticism, sharply portrayed by actor Heidi Schwartz with seething yet understated resentment and anger. Kit’s growing defiance sparks her sister’s betrayal and her father’s punishment, culminating in Grace supplanting her older sister at the ball.
Surprisingly, this prompts Kit to capitulate to her society’s demands for submissiveness. At first, we attribute this change of heart to the sisters’ now overt rivalry and Kit’s desire to retain her position in the hierarchy of the home. But HICKEY reveals more to the story, as well as a deeper corruption in a community fixated on control over female sexuality. It makes for a devastating reveal and a dramatic resolution to Grace’s and Kit’s fates. And underneath its somber naturalism and restrained tenor, the film’s uneasy conclusion pulls no punches, haunting viewers well after the story ends.
