It’s Not You (Short)
A daughter has just learned that her parents are going to be getting a divorce. The mother begins to go through the typical spiel about how “it’s nothing you did, this is for the best, etc.” that we have heard in countless other films over the year. As she speaks, the daughter begins to think back to times where she was happy with her parents, goofy moments and personal moments, but suddenly, she begins to see them in a different perspective, and see the truth in them. She then simply says to her parents, “Okay.”
Writer-director Sophie Peters-Wilson doesn’t approach her subject in a linear fashion, but rather, creates a tone poem about how a child might experience the realization that her seemingly happy life isn’t so happy. That makes what we see in the film’s 3 minutes, 45 seconds more impactful than if she had stretched it out, we had seen the parents (Sara Ruth Blake and Timothy J. Cox) sit the daughter down (Abigail Spitler), and begin the talk as we’ve seen it done many times before. It’s a tough moment when you realize that your parents aren’t always happy in their life together, but when you get past that shock, it helps in getting you to the “new normal” of your life with them. My parents never divorced, but I know they weren’t always happy. That they made it work feels miraculous at times, but they’re no better than ones, like in this film, who can’t. It just means they found a way. That four minutes of film got me thinking about my own life in this way is a bit startling, but it doesn’t matter how long a film is– if it gets you thinking, it’s something special.
