“Why don’t we slice it in half? That’s like the nature of a bagel.”
“I want the whole bagel.”
So goes the romance when singing neighbors become lovers, drawn together by the promise of a buttered bagel in Jamie Travis’s short film “Greed,” one of the Seven Sins films anthology of films produced for Bravo!FACT.
The deliciousness of this short film is in the blend of genres: romantic farce meets musical meets tragic romance, with a little food network love thrown into the mix, which emphasizes how close “greed” is to “gluttony” perhaps. NC at the Movies featured Travis’s short “The Armoire” a few weeks ago. Though Travis’s familiar aesthetic is here in the set design and the perfect stiff awkwardness of the shots, the tone is light, and the film seems to bounce emotionally: from desire, to hunger, to confusion, to surprise, to loss . . . all lightly, just as the camera lightly waltzes back and forth between their two windows.
In the center of the film, first she then he are featured in close-up shots, addressing the camera directly: we are caught between the lovers, caught between the disagreement over the bagel, caught at the precipice. In terms of montage, this is awkward, this is a harsh collision. This gap we stand in could at another moment be the obstacle to a kiss, but here it is certainty: that she will take all the bagel, and that he will explore other options. But the ending seems more sweet than sad or unrequited. They both seem clearer about what they crave.
The Seven Sins anthology of films were produced and broadcast for Bravo!FACT video on the Bravo network, each of the seven films directed by a different director, a list that also includes Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Joe Cobden, Anita Doron, Ann Marie Fleming, Bruce McDonald, and Larry Weinstein.
— R. W. Gray