Filmmaker Statement

This film was born out of a combination of my favorite plays ‘A Doll’s House’, ‘Miss Julie’, and ‘Machinal’. It is baffling that while these plays were written in the 19th/early 20th centuries, their themes still resonate today. Men forcibly define and control the role of women in society. My objective is in no way to define what womanhood means, as it isn’t my place to do so. It was to firstly understand the difficulties of breaking away from a mentally abusive relationship; the good times feel ethereal and joyous, the bad times hyper-realistic and horrendous. Secondly, to explore to what lengths a man would go to enforce his expectations of what a woman should be, through various manipulative means such as gas-lighting, guilt-tripping, and emotional blackmail. George is broken. His ego defenses refuse to let him acknowledge that reality. Every time Sara seeks truth, George lashes out in fear his vulnerabilities will surface.