Writer/director/star Frankie Shaw created this nine-minute short film, exploring the tension between a young womans previous freedoms and her current status as a skint single mother as she invites an old flame (Thomas Middleditch) over to her studio apartment while her son is asleep, apparently to rekindle something between them. Well, the movie is called SMILF for a reason. The films damaged, awkward humour and endearingly natural performances have won critical acclaim, Shaw in particular being singled out as something special. Its sadly a rare and special occasion when a film so triumphantly about a specifically female experience actually breaks out of the pack to be seen by a larger audience. Too often, cinema of this nature is marginalised as a niche concern: baffling, when you consider that the niche theyre referring to is fully half the population of the planet. Semi-autobiographical in nature, SMILF won the Sundance jury award for Short Film: US Fiction, and on the strength of that has been put into development at cable network Showtime for adaptation as a potential half hour comedy starring Shaw, who would again write, produce and star.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
