This is Without You (Chris Capelluto, 2011): USA

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.  Viewed on YouTube.

This is Without You is a short (8 minute) student film about Amanda Chase (Robyn Young), wife of Sgt. Dylan Chase (Shawn Frank) who is serving in Iraq.

Amanda is desperately lonely and eagerly awaits hearing from her sweetheart, but in despair, she is reduced to the harmful practice of cutting herself in order to deflect her sorrow.

She initially declines an offer from her friend for a night of partying, but when told “you can’t worry yourself to death about your husband, it won’t change anything,” she accepts.

After drinking, dancing and drugs with intent to numb herself, Amanda collapses in a hallucinatory state, only to wake up (literally and figuratively) to her father cautioning her that “being alone isn’t easy for anyone.”

Paralyzed by fear and loneliness, the message is clear for Amanda that everyone suffers from some sort of insecurity, it is how one works through it that determines the outcome.

Capelluto (Middleman, 2011) manages to succinctly wrap up a nice, tidy little film with an important message.  Well written with good camera work and good acting, but more significant is the editing – with a dream like sequence for Amanda, that doubles as a real time sequence for Sgt. Chase, all with an agitative edge.

It would behoove the filmmaker to slow down on his ending credits.