PLEASE CARE | Omeleto

A drama teacher writes a play about his life for his students to perform.


PLEASE CARE is used with permission from Bertie Gilbert. Learn more at https://bertiegilbert.co.uk.


Max is a drama teacher who has recently lost his wife in a fire and is raw with grief about it. But instead of taking time off, seeing a counselor or talking with a friend, Max is processing his trauma by writing and directing a play about the event. And even more, he's turned it into a secondary school production to be performed by his students, much to their bewilderment.

Far from being cathartic, putting up the play has only brought out the worst in Max, as he scrambles to keep everything afloat. And now, on opening night, he must reckon not only with the shambling production but the display of his deep-seated issues and trauma for all the world to see.

Directed by Bertie Gilbert from a script co-written with Dean Dobbs, this compassionate short drama focuses on one man's inability to process his pain and grief over a devastating loss. There's never any easy way to experience such difficult emotions, but Max's method of processing is particularly egregious and dysfunctional in its public nature. The film strikes a uniquely British tone, with great wit and eccentricity layered over a core of genuine emotional despair.

With such rocky emotional terrain, the film's visuals aptly possess an undertow of melancholy, with the dark, sculpted shadows of the theatrical backstage milieu contrasting with the subdued naturalism away from the production. The play-within-a-play set-up offers many flourishes of arch, offbeat humor, especially when the storytelling captures the reactions of Max's students, which range from blase to bored to bewildered. We find levity in the contrast of the students' youthful amateur energy with the serious subject matter, and the mad scramble of the backstage atmosphere keeps intrigue percolating along.

But as the story settles on Max during opening night, we come to understand just how real the material is for Max, and why getting the play right -- even under such odd and limited circumstances -- means so much to him. Actor Hugh Skinner balances the comedic shadings in what is essentially a tragic role, as a man trying to process his considerable suffering, pain and guilt. As Max retools his magnum opus for another go as the film culminates -- and his sister-in-law confronts him about what she sees as a grotesque display of emotion -- he must face the rawness of his feelings head-on.

By the end of PLEASE CARE, Max discovers the toxic, grandiose way he's gone about it doesn't insulate him from the despair or loss. Max and the film put a Wes Anderson-like whimsy over the darker, more difficult emotions, but as it builds to its climactic scene, there is just no escape from grief. There is just a man in the dark, feeling bereft with everything he's lost, trying to find his way to some comfort in the midst of it all. He can only find it by finally facing the depth of his emotion, and accepting the consolation that comes from sharing it from the heart.