Acceptance-ish (Short)
“Acceptance-ish” is a story in five quick scenes. Belinda (Rene Donlan) is dealing with the death of her sister, Heather (co-writer Anna Remus). In the first scene, the preacher finds her painting the nails of her sister’s corpse as if nothing is unusual. Next, her and a former lover of her sister are talking. Well, the lover, Andy, is talking about how Heather opened up his mind sexually, and how he’d like to find that connection again. Next, Belinda has to go back to the printer about the programs, which appear blank. Not so fast- they just have invisible ink. Now, at the funeral, her mother wants Belinda to pass out “nips” of alcohol to everyone (except Uncle Jerry, of course), and Andy can’t wait to show his dance team’s moves set to Tupac. When the music doesn’t work out, Belinda snaps, and storms out, taking some mementos of her sister with her. In a parking lot, she finds something resembling acceptance.
Each scene in this film is preceded by a title card naming off one of Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief. The descriptions of each scene above should give you an idea of which scene represents which stage. It’s an inspired idea for a short, which Remus, her co-writer/director T. Kane Stanton and Donlan pull off quite well. With musical stings by Felipe Adomo Vassao and Matt Oakley that give the film a fitting tone for what Stanton and Remus have to show us, we get a five-minute short film than doesn’t dig deep into the emotions of grief, but skims the surface effectively to show us a young woman who needs some relief at the end for her emotions after how ridiculous the people around her are behaving while dealing with their own grief. We feel like she gets there, and it’s an enjoyable thing to see.
