Antonia (Rebecca Calder) is a wry and restrained investment banker who
enjoys the luxuries that her career provides her, and Max (Jack Gordon) is a self-assured aspiring East London actor. They are getting to know each playing teasing
psychological games with one another and deconstructing the act of ‘dating’
over the course of a few successful evenings.
As they begin to reveal themselves, they each disclose secrets and
insecurities that bring them closer together but ultimately lead to commit
shocking acts of revenge…
Writer/Director Martin Stitt manages to create a pair of engaging characters with
realistic dialogue, and then direct the actors to bring the script to life with
beautifully comfortable and naturalistic performances. The way in which Max embodies the deafening
monotony of unemployment, and how Max and Antonia recreate the cloudy
irrationality of a couples argument are both uncomfortably authentic. As the narrative moves towards its troubling
conclusion, both of the characters elicit sympathy and disdain from the
audience in equal parts – the sign of a successful an engaging drama.
This is a film about intimacy, sex and
power, and the overwhelming stress that career status (and symbolism) can have
on relationships. Both Antonia’s success
in The City and Max’s inability to land roles on the stage have creeping, yet
profound, implications for the stability of their emerging relationship – a
dynamic that will be familiar to a British audience as obsessed as we are to
notions of class.
The best of British cinema has always
been able to peer through the window into fractious domestic relationships and
reveal a subtle reflection of the state-of-the-nation. Underneath the plot of scheming and sex, Love / Me / Do manages to comment on
multiculturalism, capitalism and social mobility in Cameron’s Britain. Antonia’s claustrophobic apartment mirrors
London’s growing hostility and the montage over the closing credits is a
chilling metaphor for the capitals future.
Love/Me/Do is playing at this year’s
Raindance. More details here
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