From Omeleto.
A man gets a partner.
DUMMY is used with permission from Andrew Kaberline. Learn more at https://andrewkaberline.com.
Bill is a divorced middle-aged man. At work, he teaches CPR, using dummies to demonstrate technique. His recent divorce has left him adrift and alone, and his life feels empty without the comforts of companionship and marriage.
When a new dummy — nicknamed Anne by his workplace — shows up at his apartment, he thinks his co-worker is playing a prank on him.
Directed by Lukas Hassel from a script written by Andrew Kaberline, this uniquely unsettling short drama deftly navigates an unusual tonal spectrum, ranging from dry humor to creeping dread. It begins as a coolly observed portrait of a divorced man filling the empty corners of his life, but then it gradually mutates into something far more uncanny, exposing just how far some will go for belonging and companionship.
We first meet Bill, a lonely divorcee moving through life with a resigned monotony. Rendered in muted, naturalistic visuals interjected with the occasional off-kilter angle or framing, Bill’s life is portrayed on a too-even keel; he’s lonely, surrounded by silence. But a dummy he’s named Anne somehow finds its way from work to his home, and things begin to change as the dummy fills in the empty blanks of his post-divorce life.
The storytelling injects this setup with a slant that feels both slightly absurdist, dryly comical and gently sympathetic. As Bill, actor Umberto Lenzi plays the role of an ordinary Everyman with a quiet loneliness lurking underneath a decent, professional surface, but the gentle consideration he gives to Anne feels genuinely sweet. But as he fleshes out his domestic dreams with the dummy, the tone subtly shifts. As his home gradually feels more real with Anne, bringing him a sense of belonging and comfort, as odd as it all is. But Anne, as it turns out, has ideas of her own, which come into being in an eerie way — and reflect Bill’s deepest dreams and fears.
From there, the character portrait that we began with shifts into something odder and more foreboding, and DUMMY begins to pose another set of questions that will draw viewers until its indelibly creepy end. Economical in its storytelling, its unsettling conclusion could be read as a modern, absurdist take on the story of the velveteen rabbit or a comment on how far people will go to assuage their very real loneliness and longing. However you spin it, the feeling it leaves is hard to shake — and you might never look at a mannequin in a store the same way again.
