Short Film Review: Play it Safe
“Where do we start?”
Jonathan (Jonathan Ajayi) is attending his acting class, but by being the only black person in the group, what seems to be a normal session turns into a lesson about racial prejudices that disguise themselves as good intentions.
Play it Safe lasts a bit more than ten minutes, is not even a full class, but you can feel the narrative intensity increase and, although you’re waiting for it to happen, the protagonist’s catharsis feels disturbing when it comes. During the session, we see micro racial aggressions that his classmates ignore what they are: Jonathan is offered a role full of stereotypes in another student’s play, his physical attractiveness is referred to as something over-sexual and while doing an exercise of role-playing, he randomly picks a monkey card to perform.
No one, besides Jonathan and the viewer, seems aware of his feelings. He debates himself between the challenge or “playing it safe”, but we all know his reaction will be imminent.
The short film won in the Narrative section of the SXSW film festival, virtually executed this 2021. Is written and directed by Mitch Kalis as his directorial debut and it is based on his own experiences as an acting student in England. The camera work is fascinating and, even if it doesn’t explicitly shows the difficult parts, it won’t save you the uncomfortable result and the bad taste in your mouth at the end. It may be a short story but it has a valuable lesson about questioning the actions we think are the right ones as white people.
This review was originally published in Spanish here.