From Omeleto.
A woman wants a baby.
FREEZE is used with permission from Maya Albanese. Learn more at https://mayaalbanese.com.
Joy is about to turn 35, and as she hits her "fertility cliff," she wants to have a baby soon. But when her fairytale romance falls apart, she seeks the services of a fertility doctor at the eerie Dream Life Lab and Clinic.
But the doctor’s hard sell sparks a crisis within her, compounded by familial pressures and society’s own push towards motherhood. As her sense of inadequacy and shame build, she finds herself in a psychological maelstrom and spins out.
Directed and written by Maya Albanese, this vivid, funhouse mirror of short dramedy is a colorful, eccentric take on one woman’s reckoning with her biological clock. Part body-horror and part comedic fever dream, its striking, brightly hued look and feel, vivid pastel hues and retro-feminine visual aesthetic are a stark contrast to absurdist humor and surrealist flourishes that intensify as Joy’s existential panic builds.
The narrative is driven by the ebbs and flows of Joy’s subjectivity, but that mental landscape is distinctively externalized with outlandish and often very funny visuals. The rhythms of the storytelling are jumbled and fragmented, mirroring Joy’s anxiety, especially after her cad of a paramour — played with a blase suavity by actor Adrien Grenier — breaks up with her.
Pressure from the fertility clinic works upon her doubt and uncertainty to sell her on the idea of freezing her eggs. The clinic is meant to give her “peace of mind,” but it weaponizes her anxiety to sell an exorbitantly priced egg-freezing package, making for a funny but pointed commentary on how egg-freezing has become a commodified, anxiety-driven industry, dressed up with candy metaphors and cult-like urgency.
Some of the film’s most memorable moments are its strange, startling flourishes, like tiny babies in an egg carton or how brochures come to life with startling scenarios. It also features vivid cameos from beloved comedy performers like actor Chris Parnell, which add to the zaniness of the storytelling. But it’s all grounded by a rich, expressive performance by actor Nora Zehetner, who straddles surreal comedy and emotionally raw drama. As Joy confronts her dwindling fertility. It’s no wonder she acts out — allowing for fate to intervene and spin her into a new direction.
Smart, vivid and freewheeling, FREEZE is a descent into a Wonderland of sorts, a odd and disquieting adventure that conveys the mounting dread many women face as fertility becomes a looming deadline. It trafficks in absurdity yet never loses sight of Joy’s emotional reality. Like Alice, Joy emerges on the other side, a little worse for wear but with more insight into the future.
