When Zoe decides that she needs a little space to breathe, her girlfriend Marie starts to panic in the short film Sugarhiccup by first time director Lisa Donato. Check out our review after the jump.
Relationships are tricky things. Sometimes it takes even more than love to make them work and trust is key. After some serious thought, Zoe decides she needs to get a little space from her girlfriend Marie, due to there being a third wheel in their relationship – Marie’s best friend, Jesse. Zoe believes that there may be more going on between Marie and Jesse and it’s putting a huge strain on their life.
Marie wakes up to find a single post-it note stuck to the door, although Zoe did leave two, with the one stating where she was going having fallen off the door. Marie then begins to freak out and calls on her friend Jesse for guidance. Jesse has an ulterior motive though, and that is to rid Zoe from Marie’s life so she can try and build a romance with her.
Sugarhiccup is a great little short that allows the viewer to take a peek into a straining relationship. The writing (which was also carried out by Lisa Donato) is quirky and really well done. I was shocked by the film and it wasn’t by the subject matter, language or the flash of ass towards the end – it was by the realization that this was Donato’s first film. It is seriously well-made; you’d expect to see this sort of quality from a film maker with ten short films under their belt. Sugarhiccup ticks all the right boxes when it comes to production value.
The sound is crisp, with an excellent score by Nicholas Statan. The cinematography is superbly done by Jeffery Schwinghammer and that is complemented by some excellent lighting and color grading. Sugarhiccup also featured some superb visual effects by Tim Kwong. Where some directors may have had the actors read out any communication their character’s receive by e-mail or text messages, Donato and Kwong have the correspondence flash up, allowing the audience to read them for themselves. It really works too.
Fawzia Mirza does a great job portraying Marie, as does Nikki Caster as her besotted friend Jesse. Whilst Leila Vatan doesn’t have a huge role as Zoe, she does a fine job when she is on the screen too.
Sugarhiccup is exceptionally good for a first time director and if Lisa Donato continues to create films to such a high standard, she could very well have a long and successful career in the film industry.
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