A woman meets her ex to get her passport.
BOXED UP is used with permission from Lochlainn McKenna. Learn more at locky.film.
Cara and Alan are a former couple who broke up not too long ago. But they're meeting up because Cara has left her passport among Alan's things, and she needs it before she leaves on a big international trip that will take her away from Ireland for a long time.
They meet outside before Alan starts work, and Cara has a box of Alan's things that she wants to give him. But Alan is reluctant to take the box, which opens up some painful revelations for Cara. As they exchange things -- and likely say goodbye for good -- their unfinished business also arises.
Directed and written by Lochlainn McKenna, this short romantic drama is essentially a post-breakup post-mortem, an extended scene between two former lovers who once shared everything but have seemingly moved onto their separate paths. Cleverly shot from the point-of-view of the box and unfurling in one continuous take, it's visually unconventional with its "fly on the wall" approach, with occasionally bumpy camerawork and seemingly haphazard framing that matches the emotional tenor of the conversation. But it also offers an unvarnished intimacy in an awkward situation, in which two people reckon with the feelings and unfinished business of their past relationship.
As a one-shot, the film relies on excellent writing and performance to generate momentum and intrigue. The dialogue has a perfect ear for how people who once were deeply intimate with one another have become strangers with time. There's the initial awkwardness of the beginning of their meet-up, the wary exchange of information and then the attempts to put a bright spin on their current lives, particularly by Cara.
But difficult emotions can't help but leak out, especially when Cara discovers Alan is dating a new woman already, one she knows, and it's clear that she's hurt that Alan has moved on so easily. Actors Toni O'Rourke as Cara and Killian Coyle as Alan strike a restrained, authentic balance between the messy knot of feelings that exes often deal with: the hesitancy and uncertainty of a new dynamic, the leftover baggage of the old one and how they still fall into the vestiges of care and affection they once held for each other. They can't quite pretend all is well and done between them. They know each other too well -- and while they know this may be the actual goodbye, there are still some things and feelings they can't yet let go.
It's a complicated dance, but the actors make it ring true -- and it's why the film can take such an everyday, relatable situation and render it with such resonance and poignancy. We never quite find out what's in the box that is exchanged between Cara and Alan. But in the moments we have alone with him at the end, we see that his friendly but removed demeanor with Cara was not quite as effortless as it seemed, and the encounter affected him deeply. His final action may be his true goodbye to his former love, leaving behind the past for a reimagined future.