Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Varun is a young British-Indian man, nervous and excited about asking his pregnant girlfriend Ellie to marry him. He’s got a ring and all that. But when they run into Ellie’s ex-boyfriend, who happens to be an Indian-origin man, Varun starts wondering if Ellie has a ‘type’, leading to a changing point in their relationship.
Created by Sam Baron and Amit Shah, the short film “Tall Dark and Handsome” is a clever dark comedy about how Varun (played by Amit Shah) begins to overthink his girlfriend’s (Laura Aikman) behavior. He begins to freak out, wondering if she her over-enthusiasm about Indian people and culture is a red flag. Is that a fetish? Should that be a problem? Or is Varun the one spiraling?
“(You called her Mummyji?) I’ve literally never called her Mummy-ji!” Varun tells Ellie after a pleasant dinner with his parents. I’ll give him the slight benefit of the doubt: it is a little weird to hear someone else call your parents ‘Mom,’ ‘Dad,’ or any other variant of parental endearment, especially if they’re not your sibling.
Amit Shah is excellent as the anxious Varun, portraying the character’s fears, doubts, and insecurities with sharp ease, it’s both convincing and mildly comedic. Laura Aikman, as his cheery girlfriend Ellie (who may or may not have a fetish), is also entertaining as the quintessential “white girl who goes for brown boys.” Both sides of the family make brief appearances in the tale to highlight the cultural differences between the two of them.
The best part about Tall, Dark, and Handsome is that the couple directly confronts Varun’s concerns, engaging in a pleasantly candid and charged debate over whether Ellie’s preference for Indian men should be considered problematic. The creators also provide satisfying closure to this bubbling tension between the two. With wit and subtlety, they depict how personal insecurities can be projected onto a partner, leading to self-sabotage.
If this came to me as a script to edit, I don’t think I’d have any suggestions for improvement, except that it could’ve added a few more minutes of arguments and subtle racial tensions. For a 14 minute short film, “Tall Dark and Handsome” is tense, darkly funny, and ends with a pretty good twist, which packs in a psychological and moral lesson too.
Rating: 5 on 5. Watch it on YouTube, it’s also embedded below.