Trauma Tryst: A review of An Advert For One Night

What’s more intimate than telling a stranger your trauma soon after meeting them? Sexual intercourse soon after meeting them, possibly. And in the successfully alluring short film An Advert For One Night from writer and director Graham Birch, you get both! Valery Danko plays Lisa and Alina Tamara plays Sarah, two women who meet up one night in a hotel through a classified newspaper ad. They both play their roles engagingly, creating a nice sense of mystery between them.

The two leads have good chemistry and share a kind of Russian-British accent. It would have been nice if the script was more focused on the interactions between them in the hotel room in the present moment. Instead, a sizable chunk of the runtime gets taken up by both taking a turn sharing some sad info from their past and/or present situations. This backstory could maybe have been deployed more subtly and quickly.

Between their turns explaining their trauma, they share a bubble bath. One says to the other “You have tiny ears” which is the most humanly alive moment in the film. More of this kind of interaction would have greatly enhanced the film. And more small character details and minutiae beyond their backstories would have helped too. The love scenes are gracefully elided, which makes perfect sense for an independent short film, but it adds to the feeling that these two characters are not really engaging with each other. Which can be realistic. Sometimes we talk to other people as an excuse to talk about ourselves, and sometimes we can mistake sharing deeply personal information for forming an actual connection.

Maybe a bit more movement or action during the monologuish parts would have helped them a bit, and given the other non-monologuing actor more to work with in those scenes. At one point, one of our leads is stuck stroking the other’s scalp and hand non-stop.

Overall though, I think it’s an interesting setting with a good story and conclusion at its core. And some delicate subject matter as well as scenes of physical intimacy are deftly directed and handled. The cast play their roles with believable intrigue and emotion.