Rating: B-
Dir: Brian Follmer
Star: Kerri Lee Romeo, Adam Leotta, Brian Follmer, Nicole Alibayof
I’ll admit, I did have to suppress a slight eye-roll at another pandemic movie. Over the past couple of years, these appear to have become what found footage was, in the wake of Blair Witch. My reaction is understandable, since it’s a genre which has now undeniably been oversubscribed. It takes something different to stand out from the crowd. This definitely qualifies as such – albeit perhaps not entirely successfully. It takes place two years after Emily (Romeo) and David (Leotta) met at a New Year’s Eve party. Since then, the world has gone to hell, with an ongoing pandemic and societal collapse. They’ve hightailed it to a rural village in the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico and are just about surviving there.
As apocalypses go, it’s very much a personal-sized one. Beyond a few clips of stock footage, we see little of what has gone on in the world at large. The troubled situation is mostly alluded to, in things like the presence of armed police on the streets, and a generally suspicious attitude towards strangers becoming a necessary strategy for survival. David (who looks from some angles like a buff Weird Al), is still recovering from a bout of pneumonia the previous winter, potentially leaving him vulnerable to a new, more serious infection. This doesn’t stop him and Emily from having a very physical relationship, continuing an aspect which began almost immediately after they first met on New Year’s Eve.
To be clear, this might be the most graphic movie I’ve seen in the post-#MeToo era. For obvious reasons, that had a dramatically chilling effect on sex in films, and it’s refreshing to see a production not afraid to push the envelope back. The title has another meaning, “little deaths” being a translation of the French slang term for orgasms: les petites morts. Interestingly, it’s Emily who drives things here, to a point where you feel almost sorry for David, given her demands on his increasingly weakened state. So, yeah: this is not your typical pandemic film, by any means. Particularly early on, the film makes good use of voice-over, allowing us to hear both sides of how the two lead characters are feeling in any given scene.
Inevitably, all the sex can’t keep the harsh realities of the outside world at bay, and… things happen. I’ll divulge no more, though wouldn’t call it a surprise – even if it doesn’t change things in the way I would have expected it to. The ending is strikingly low-key, and I have to say, I wasn’t left liking Emily very much. It’s hard to be sure if this was the intended outcome, or a result of my own, personal prejudices. If the genders had been reversed, the situation might have been more clear-cut – and likely less interesting. Strong performances, especially from Romeo, did a better job of keeping my interest than I expected, and I suspect you’ll be left with plenty to chew on after the credits roll.