From Omeleto.
A woman meets her ex.
PIECE OF CAKE is used with permission from Jack Hartley. Learn more at https://jackhartley.co.uk.
A long time ago, Maureen dated Marvin. She was crazy about him, but Maureen’s mother Beryl did not like Marvin — or how Maureen didn’t focus on the family baking business with Marvin in her life. Acceding to Beryl’s wishes, Maureen dropped Marvin and concentrated on baking, though before they ended, Maureen let slip the secret to Beryl’s delicious cakes and pies.
But Beryl wants to make sure the secret stays in the family, so she convinces Maureen to reconnect with Marvin and "take care" of the situation. But when face-to-face with her ex-lover, Maureen finds her resolve weakening.
Directed and written by Jack Hartley, this roguish short dark comedy evokes a cloistered, cluttered and cozy domestic and familial working-class world. But instead of detouring through kitchen sink realism, the storytelling takes a more surreal, mischievous turn, injecting sinister humor, stylized visuals and razor-sharp observation into what are essentially two life-altering conversations.
Its offbeat visuals, lived-in production design and cinematography conjure a slightly heightened Northern English working-class milieu, mired in the domestic and even feminine. Even the mother’s initial mission — to make sure the secret recipe doesn’t go beyond the family — has a whimsical slant to it. But when we see the lengths that Beryl wants Maureen to go to — and Beryl’s manipulation of her daughter — the film reveals it has more up its sleeve besides the sweet and fanciful.
The writing appears simple in structure, focusing on a set of two different relationships: that of a mother and daughter, and then between that daughter and her ex. Maureen — played by actor Jennifer Banks as a determinedly pleasant people pleaser with daffy humor and a tinge of desperation — is the connecting piece between her fierce and controlling matriarch and a seemingly ordinary, even hapless ex-boyfriend, and much of the film’s initial tension focuses on how she balances her loyalties and desires, especially when she comes face to face with Marvin.
Marvin seems happy to see Maureen, with actor Steve Evets initially evincing a bumbling, even wistful charm and genuine affection that stokes a flame of hope and desire in Maureen, which blooms in a comical fashion. But much like the film itself, Evets peels back that winsome surface to reveal a certain canniness. It’s a linchpin of a performance, one that allows the film one final sleight-of-hand flourish and crowns the film’s masterful balancing act of tone, humor and sensibility. It also reveals just how much PIECE OF CAKE is like a cake itself: it has a surface of sugar and niceness, but underneath its elements lurks a sly wit, a wryly toxic take on how dysfunctional family dynamics feed into romantic ones and an observation on how the sweet promise of love can mask a bitter poison.
