From Omeleto.
A woman expresses her anger.
THE TALK is used with permission from Hariharasudhen Nagarajan. Learn more at https://hariharasudhen.com.
Julia is talking. She hasn’t heard from her boyfriend Charlie, who took off to Croatia without her, leaving their shared life and apartment behind.
As she talks, Julia is nervous and unconfident at first, but soon she is unloading her pent-up anxiety and stress over the phone. As she speaks, she convinces herself that she can’t be in this relationship anymore and that Charlie is all wrong for her. But when confronted with the sound of his voice, she’s not so certain.
Directed by Hariharasudhan Nagarajan and written by Melanie Coffey, this artful and aching short drama opens as Julia is speaking on her phone. Beginning in media res, she’s unloading her confusion, bewilderment and hurt after her boyfriend Charlie ran off to Croatia, leaving her, his job and their shared home behind. But now he’s returning, and the emotional floodgates have opened, unleashing a torrent of conflicting, difficult and thorny feelings.
Shot with low-key, muted black-and-white cinematography and in one shot, the storytelling is primarily carried in its dialogue, rich with specific, vivid detail of the couple’s life together. Brought to life by actor Meg Cashel’s raw, at times bristling performance, Julia’s initial hurt at Charlie’s abandonment soon unfurls into a litany of grievances and resentments that have built up over time. The performance, dialogue and camera deftly bob and weave together to paint a picture of a relationship that has made Julia feel insecure for some time, and Charlie’s hasty actions have led Julia to a breaking point.
The highly concentrated combination of a real-time, unbroken performance is emotionally intense at times, but as Julia speaks, we can also detect something underneath the pain and hurt she expresses. She is desperate to be heard, understood and seen because she still cares. Underneath the unbroken stream of difficult emotion is a yearning to know she still matters to Charlie. The glimmers of that insight carry into the film’s final movement, when Julia is confronted with the reality of Charlie’s presence. We’ve just borne witness to Julia’s suffering and grief, and in what has become a kind of self-therapy session, she is confronted with the truth that this isn’t the right person or relationship for you. And now, she’s on the precipice of a break.
But THE TALK is a little more weathered and wise about the vicissitudes of romantic relationships, and about the intense need for humans to attach and connect, no matter what. Human attachment is one of the strongest psychological forces at work in ourselves, and at its most dysregulated, it even works against even the most rational parts of our mind. We can tell ourselves anything — that someone will change, that we will choose better. But it takes more than talk to set another course sometimes.
