ANNIVERSARY ｜ Omeleto

A woman gets a makeover. It's Carla's anniversary, and she's sure that her husband Frank is going to surprise her with dinner. He had forgotten the year before, so he's going to make up for that slight with something fancy and extravagant -- starting with the bouquet left on her doorstep. She enlists her best friend and neighbor, Angela, to help make her over for dinner, helping her reinvent her frumpy appearance into something exciting and attractive. But it's not so easy when you're no longer young, and Carla and Angela are on a tight deadline before Frank comes home. Directed and written by Lain Kienzle, this short comedy has broad, riotous energy, tracking the nearly herculean efforts of one woman to get ready for a romantic night with her husband. The film essentially elongates one of the trusty staples of many female-centered comedies: the makeover montage, where a character undergoes "the works" to reinvent her physical image, often in the hopes of reinventing her inner self with fresh, exciting energy. Here, rendered in a visual style that is both naturalistic and cannily heightened, it's stretched out in a way that's both thoughtful and humorous, turning the hope and effort of glamour into a good-natured chain of mishaps and discomfort and a meditation of what we do to make ourselves worthy of love and attention.