Omeleto | DEAR OWNER | Omeleto @Omeleto | Uploaded September 2024 | Updated October 2024, 1 day ago.
A couple tries to impress a homeowner.
DEAR OWNER is used with permission from Jonathan Coleman. Learn more at imdb.com/title/tt32253224.
LeAnn and Matthew Romero are a married couple in the market to buy a house. The current owner of the home they're hoping to buy wants to meet with them, due to the letter they've written as part of their offer on the property. LeAnn and Matthew, eager to buy, agree.
But meeting with Barbara proves to be unexpectedly stressful. Barbara is sharp, opinionated and tough-minded, with an ability to passive-aggressively cast disdain on others. A former death-row lawyer, she's a formidable presence, and she turns a friendly meeting into an intense interrogation and battle of wills. When the prospective deal looks like it won't go through, LeAnn and Matthew must decide how far they're willing to stay within the bounds of politeness to get what they want.
Directed by Jonathan Coleman and written by Marc Paykuss, this sharply observed short comedy of manners is essentially a thorny dance between two parties, as one homeowner decides if a couple is worthy of the privilege of buying her home. The comedy comes from the asymmetrical expectations that each party brings to the encounter. The Romeros think they're having a polite meeting to get acquainted and hopefully charm the homeowner. Instead, they get ambushed by an unexpectedly formidable presence who casts judgment upon them from her lofty perch.
The narrative is essentially a conversation in one room in real-time, and the film too is shot with a simplicity, focusing mostly on the interplay of personalities at work during this tricky conversation. The dialogue, though, is rich and complex, full of insinuations, verbal traps, veiled insults and the like, all masterfully delivered by actor Marianna Houston with magisterial condescension disguised as graciousness. Confronted with Barbara's rhetorical machinations, LeAnn and Matthew -- played by actors Karis Danish and Juan Javier Cardenas, respectively -- squirm as they figure out what's going on and slowly watch their homebuying dreams fade away. They're caught between their frustration and their need to keep toadying up to Barbara, in hopes that she'll accept her offer.
In doing so, they often find themselves tongue-tied and flailing, in a manner worthy of great social comedies from Whit Stillman or Alexander Payne, who also have similar ears and eyes for how the dictums of social niceties disguise the more difficult emotions that come up in everyday life. Much like those filmmakers, DEAR OWNER also teases at the boundaries of politeness, politicking and provocation, seeing just how much the Romeros will take. But as it turns out, Barbara was playing a different game all along, in which the Romeros finally earn her respect, however begrudgingly given.
A couple tries to impress a homeowner.
DEAR OWNER is used with permission from Jonathan Coleman. Learn more at imdb.com/title/tt32253224.
LeAnn and Matthew Romero are a married couple in the market to buy a house. The current owner of the home they're hoping to buy wants to meet with them, due to the letter they've written as part of their offer on the property. LeAnn and Matthew, eager to buy, agree.
But meeting with Barbara proves to be unexpectedly stressful. Barbara is sharp, opinionated and tough-minded, with an ability to passive-aggressively cast disdain on others. A former death-row lawyer, she's a formidable presence, and she turns a friendly meeting into an intense interrogation and battle of wills. When the prospective deal looks like it won't go through, LeAnn and Matthew must decide how far they're willing to stay within the bounds of politeness to get what they want.
Directed by Jonathan Coleman and written by Marc Paykuss, this sharply observed short comedy of manners is essentially a thorny dance between two parties, as one homeowner decides if a couple is worthy of the privilege of buying her home. The comedy comes from the asymmetrical expectations that each party brings to the encounter. The Romeros think they're having a polite meeting to get acquainted and hopefully charm the homeowner. Instead, they get ambushed by an unexpectedly formidable presence who casts judgment upon them from her lofty perch.
The narrative is essentially a conversation in one room in real-time, and the film too is shot with a simplicity, focusing mostly on the interplay of personalities at work during this tricky conversation. The dialogue, though, is rich and complex, full of insinuations, verbal traps, veiled insults and the like, all masterfully delivered by actor Marianna Houston with magisterial condescension disguised as graciousness. Confronted with Barbara's rhetorical machinations, LeAnn and Matthew -- played by actors Karis Danish and Juan Javier Cardenas, respectively -- squirm as they figure out what's going on and slowly watch their homebuying dreams fade away. They're caught between their frustration and their need to keep toadying up to Barbara, in hopes that she'll accept her offer.
In doing so, they often find themselves tongue-tied and flailing, in a manner worthy of great social comedies from Whit Stillman or Alexander Payne, who also have similar ears and eyes for how the dictums of social niceties disguise the more difficult emotions that come up in everyday life. Much like those filmmakers, DEAR OWNER also teases at the boundaries of politeness, politicking and provocation, seeing just how much the Romeros will take. But as it turns out, Barbara was playing a different game all along, in which the Romeros finally earn her respect, however begrudgingly given.
