Sunday, June 24, 2007

Melissa with a Heart around It

Fourteen-year-old Jamie is active in her church, hanging out by the pool on the day of her total-immersion baptism. The pastor asks an older girl, Melissa, to take Jamie under her wing, but Jamie has dreams of more than that. She leaves a love letter in Melissa's locker, risking exposure and humiliation. Melissa with a Heart around It goes out of its way to make Melissa an unsympathetic character, leaving the audience to wonder what on earth Jamie sees in her. The characters come across as flat, without a visceral sense of what drives them. Flawed but interesting.

Melissa with a Heart around It, dir. Andrew Kenneth Gay, 2006 USA, 16 min.

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screened in the "Fun in Girls' Shorts" program

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