PROMISE(S)

Smelled like a profound family drama. Tasted like a pharmaceutical commercial.

Let us start with the editing, because this film has discovered the split screen and intends to use it until our eyes bleed. The film treats mundane morning routines like a high-stakes thriller, deploying split screens just to show a woman brushing her teeth. Later, the act of buying a purple carton of eggs is deemed so cinematically vital that we must witness it from two simultaneous angles. It is as if Brian De Palma decided to direct a vlog about running errands. The sheer necessity of watching someone select groceries from two perspectives is the visual equivalent of plating a microwaved hot dog on two different saucers.

Then, there is the tonal whiplash. We pivot violently from a somber, ambiguous bedside vigil to a full-blown pop-music montage featuring bubbles, matching graphic t-shirts, and a dog wearing bunny ears. *(Yes, the dog has bunny ears, and no, it does not clarify the plot).* It is like the film could not decide whether it was a terminal illness tragedy or a sugary TikTok challenge, so it threw both ingredients into the blender and hit frappé.

The performances are marinated in a sort of stilted apathy. The actors deliver their lines with the intense, unblinking focus of people reading a teleprompter located just over the director's left shoulder. Speaking of shoulders, I spent a good minute trying to figure out if the brother's green hoodie was an intentional character choice or just the only clean thing he had that morning. I lean towards the latter. When the grand finale finally arrives (a dramatic handover of adoption papers on a chilly park bench) it lands with all the emotional weight of a wet paper towel. "I'm going to be an uncle!" the brother exclaims, displaying the raw, unbridled enthusiasm of a man realizing his bus is running five minutes late.

And let us not forget the lighting, which bathes every interior in the flat, yellow glow of a municipal badminton tournament on a cloudy Tuesday. Wonderfully, the final wide shot of the brother jogging away manages to be the only frame with actual momentum. But by then, the dish is already cold.

Send it back to the microwave.