Director: Dylan Geurts
Writer: Dylan Geurts
Cast: Amy van der Weerden, Omar Elshershaby, Samantha Bonouvrie, Brend Boomsma
Running time: 11mins
I have a life-long fascination with cringe-comedy; like a moth drawn to a flame, I can’t keep away, no matter how badly it burns. It is something I find very difficult to explain, because watching comedy hinging on social embarrassment is a highly unpleasant process – to the extent if I am watching live, I may need to wince and look away, or if I am watching something retrospectively, I will reflexively pause when things get too much. But in many ways, it feels like the unpleasantness is the point – as a kind of inoculation against the grim realities of life.
To that extent, Jordan Peele’s quip that “the difference between comedy and horror is the music” takes on another dimension. Not just in the sense of the timing of set-pieces, or the subversion of expectations that lead to a particularly jump-scare/punchline, but in the sense that they offer up a safe space for us to address some horrors from our daily lives.
Growing up in England, in a country where the rigid class system means a social faux pas has historically taken on an additional edge of very possibly ending your prospects of climbing the ladder, might explain some of my gravitating toward cringe-comedy.
What if I were to mispronounce the name of a piece of middle class cultural capital – thus exposing myself as a pauper? That would be the end of me…
Writer-director Dylan Geurts’ short Gnocchi dances merrily along this particular fault line. The audience’s sphincters will pre-emptively clench from the moment the scenario is made clear; as Emma (Amy van der Weerden) is introduced to the friends of her partner Yasin (Omar Elshershaby) at a birthday party, somewhere in the Netherlands. Geurts and director of photography Tom van Zutphen playfully ratchet up the tension when the guests eventually direct their attention to the newcomer – placing Emma under a literal spotlight, and handing her a microphone, while a claustrophobic close-up implores her to speak, entertain us…
After a shaky recital of the story behind their first date, Emma mistakenly feels she is in the clear, and begins to real off the Italian food she at with Yasin – ending with the titular Gnocchi. Her false sense of security evaporates when she pronounces it as “no-shi” – leading her delightful hosts to double over with laughter. (And for English or Italian readers getting ready to join in the merriment, tell me without research how to pronounce ‘kalkoen‘, and then we’ll see how smug you feel after.)
Flashing forward, we find that Emma has been living in the wilderness for the year following her humiliation, plotting her revenge. But when the big moment arrives at the birthday bash, and she expects a moment of redemption, she finds herself castigated for a very different set of social norms.
As a sketch, Gnocchi certainly delivers in terms of the cringe-factor. At multiple moments I had to consciously force myself not to hit the pause button, during the film’s most excruciating moments. It also features some enjoyably underwhelming comedic beats, while Emma is in her self-imposed exile, including a laughable attempt at fishing. Meanwhile, Van der Weerden manages to channel enough earnest distress and confusion into her performance, that she remains an empathetic figure – someone to cringe with, not at.
With that said, however, as a story, Gnocchi feels in need of something deeper, and more innovative to justify its 11-minute run-time.
Geurts has strewn cues throughout the script which might have been picked up on and developed for moments of narrative and emotional development – as well as a different level of comedy. In the initial party scene, Emma makes it clear she doesn’t celebrate her own birthday, implying the possibility of some long-term trauma or anxiety. At the same time, when introducing herself, the host Noah (Samantha Bonouvrie) lets slip that they are “finally” meeting – further suggesting anxiety has kept Emma away from previous gatherings. This is important, because it establishes that Noah, Yasin’s purported friend, knows that Emma – someone he apparently cares about deeply – is acutely nervous of the occasion on multiple levels, and still uses the opportunity to seize on a minor mispronunciation to mock someone she has only just met.
Those are all the calling cards of a real dickhead. As is the fact that Yasin – who had to walk Emma through breathing exercises on the doorstep on their arrival – fails to stand up for his partner in this moment. Whether or not it seems like a big deal in terms of social convention – to people who don’t know any of the context – both Yasin and Noah do, and they immediately become resentful presences. The problem with that is that the social desires to live up to their standards dissolve along with their likeability. From that moment, whatever further mistakes Emma makes, the further they take her from those relationships, the better.
At the same time, the opportunity to explore the haughty classism of Emma’s supposed humiliation (unequal opportunities for travel and education meaning the finer details of international cuisine are still a way some people discern between haves and have-nots in social settings) is passed up. The question we feel primed to consider from Emma’s perspective is, “Is it worth going to absurd ends to punish yourself after you say something silly?”But a more interesting question to be directed at Yasin is, “Were your utterly tedious friends worth alienating your long-term partner over the name of a potato dumpling?” The final shots of the film, featuring a look of silent condemnation from Yasin, suggests this is not a question which seemed obvious to anyone during production. Instead, the status quo is re-affirmed, and we conclude with Emma’s behaviour firmly remaining the butt of the joke.
To an extent, that makes the film feel like it is out of step with the wider genre, too. Thanks to shows like I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, the equations at play seem to have been turned on their heads. While initially so many of those sketches cue us to cringe from a certain conventional standpoint, by the end those expectations have collapsed, and the contradictions and conveniences of standard, traditional comedy sketches laid bare. Gnocchi never manages that – and while it manages some truly wince-inducing moments, it ends up delivering the safe, quaint, faintly ridiculous kind of comedy that might uncharitably be called ‘advert humour’.
Gnocchi is a solid, technically well produced short. Fear of a poor first impression, social anxiety, and being mocked on a classist basis are all legitimate fears, while the protagonist encountering them is rightly empathetic. But in terms of the comedic exploration of those deeper themes, we don’t really get beyond the sillier surface level. With underdeveloped emotional stakes, or a willingness to call out the nastier tendencies of our social norms, it all feels a little cheap.