Little Cuts Review: Two Women Lost in the Quick Sand of Bullying

Logline
In a renewed determination to fix their broken friendship, two former best female friends travel to a desert resort. What begins as an idyllic retreat or renewal quickly erupts into irrevocable chaos.

Introduction
Little Cuts, premiered last year at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts film festival. It was nominated for Best Comedy. Little Cuts is a two cast, 16-minutes fictional presentation written and directed by Maia Henkin. The story re-visits a prior relationship. One between two 8th grade teenage girls, who are now grown, and share the insecurities of adult women. The film title Little Cuts is presented as a metaphor. It represents a passive-aggressive attack, bullying by or against any one or either of the story’s two female characters.

Review
Pam played by actress/producer Elise Greene, and Jo played by writer/director Maia Henkin drive out into a resort located inside a desert. Pam had began singing a song the girls had loved as kids. But, as soon as Jo (driving) joins in, Pam retracts then stops singing. Although, Jo asks Pam back into the song. She verbally, and physically in a toxic response, says “cause you voice is so much better than mine”, and blinks looking out the window into her reflection inside the side mirror. Which reflect her crushed ego back, as a women under unresolved internal issues resulting for bullying. The audience gets their feel of a little cut at Jo from Pam.

The Official Trailer for Little Cuts

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The drive over is particularly lonely, and isolated. The mood inside the car isn’t chatty. There are no laughs, giggles, or girliness, but for a song from Pam, who rejects Jo’s participation, and throws a covert behaviour. Jo ignores the dry response from Pam, and returns a made-up, happy go luck girl-ish smile. A glimpse of a world we’d be hurled into the next moment. The desert’s climate for a single moment seems to amplify the emptiness between the two women. As Jo pulls up the car at the desert resort, she alights, going on about the rocks, to complains of dryness, as she pulls out an inhaler, then puffs a few into her mouth. The audience sees a display of a vulnerability which is a foreshadow of a later scene, she is asthmatic. It will kill you to watch the climax of Little Cuts.

These two women drawn into a desert’s isolation by a bond they hope to rediscover, will learn why the desert truly invited them. Their envy, insecurity, sadness and underlying anger will get the better of them. They will rediscover nothing, but a forgone, dead, and buried friendship. In the end, they will epitomize a very toxic, yet bullyish relationship with all its consequences. There will be no answers to the bond they sought to rediscover. The desert will swallow both of them up like its quick sand responds to any weight.

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Maia Henkin interplays the Little Cuts as passive aggressive actions and reactions. She crafts a narrative that compels the audience to follow the arc of the story. She reveals an incremental or growing threat through subtle, and obvious dramatic conflicts between the women. Depicting and unraveling bullying in each moment or scene of the movie. A display of a toxic relationship that has no cure, but seeks accountability, judgement and consequence from its characters.

Conclusion
Little Cuts is great entertainment. I’ll give it that. It kept me waiting eagerly for the climax, and I dreaded to watch it, but couldn’t turn it off. Little Cuts employs very good filmmaking, even with a single camera. It is also wonderful acting. The ingenuity in the acting is crafted to read as tough, the women are repulsive to one another, and yet do a good job of hiding it. The two actors combine very remarkably well, a result of the combination of skilled actors, acting techniques persistent and diligent study.

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Writer & Directed: Maia Henkin

Cast
Elise Greene as Pam
Maia Henkin as Jo

Produced: Elise Greene
Writer: Maia Henkin
Cinematography: Edward Salerno Jr.
Production Design: Maia Henkin
Second Unit Director: Jonathan Stoddard
Sound Department: Suzan Jones, Nixon Sanchez
Visual Effects: Kevin Lee Loader
Camara and Electrical Department: Chad Harrell
Colorist: Fernando Torres Idrovo

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