From Omeleto.
A woman explains her husband’s death.
ANIMUS is used with permission from Delaney Bishop. Learn more at https://bishoptakesqueen.com.
Melissa is a physicist and wife facing a police interrogation. Her third husband is dead, and she is suspected of murder. As Sarafina, the detective, probes her, she recounts her history with each one. Each marriage was different: one husband was a sadist who punished her, and another was controlling under the guise of being in love. And the latest has fallen to his death.
Melissa explains each death, though Sarafina is increasingly skeptical. She links each death together, offering a very novel — or very delusional — defense. She thinks each dead husband’s energy entered into the next spouse, linked with certain phrases and symbols that keep repeating. Sarafina is not convinced. But when Melissa is offered the chance to break the pattern, the resulting events test the boundaries of belief for both Melissa and Sarafina.
Directed by Delaney Bishop from a script written by Ron Osborn, this stylishly crafted short drama-thriller uses a premise out of film noir — a potential femme fatale with a string of dead husbands — to explore patterns of abuse and trauma. The polished writing uses the structure of a crime interrogation to flesh out Melissa’s story, setting up fascinating questions of not just her potential guilt, but how she finds herself, again and again, in these relationships.
Gleaming with strong, bold images and elegant camerawork, the film is visually polished and rarified, hinting at the upscale milieu that Melissa lives and works within. Yet Melissa’s intellect and wealth cannot insulate her from finding herself in a series of toxic marriages. We only see hints of her dynamic with each husband, but Sarafina’s investigation fills in the background information and a dissonant, dynamic musical score by System of a Down’s Serj Tankian imbues the visual artfulness with uneasiness and dread.
Each small scene with Melissa’s first two husbands portrays different types of cruelty and control, but they also hint at the strange parallels between each husband, linked most directly by the notion of "ying and yang" brought up by each husband. Actor Angela Sarafyan offers a hypnotic performance as Melissa, playing a wan, almost affectless demeanor that conceals a growing, worn-down brokenness with each troubled relationship. As Sarafina, actor Nancy Travis is the audience proxy as the tough and skeptical detective, yet she’s not unsympathetic to Melissa’s history.
Melissa’s explanation is seemingly outlandish, like a strange, convoluted riff on reincarnation. And yet as ANIMUS builds up to Melissa’s climactic decision — one that may liberate her from the cycle — it becomes a potent exploration of dangerous relationship patterns, underscored by the film’s segue into an almost supernatural dimension at the end. We’re left with a sense of disquiet: did Melissa truly break the pattern? Escape is never easy, freedom is hard-won and sometimes costly and the nightmare is sometimes not as far as one would hope.
