Just going off its name, a short called Tea, doesn’t feel like it will be all that heartwarming. It doesn’t even feel like it’s going to be romantic. I wouldn’t have thought it would have me rethinking how I approach new people. And yet Blake Rice’s Tea is both visually captivating and emotionally satisfying in a way that, ironically, feels just like a hot cup of tea on a cold afternoon.
It’s also a really easy watch that leaves you feeling good.
The short, basically about a man who gets stung in the throat by a hornet while rehearsing to ask the girl of his dreams on a date, and then has to be saved by that very same girl, could have gone a couple of ways. It could have gone for comedy or it could have gone for melodrama. Tea, instead, does neither and it lands firmly in the middle with a very real tale of human connection in the middle of a very scary situation.
Make no mistake, there are some truly funny moments in Tea, particularly after Michael Gandolfini’s character first gets stung and he’s trying to communicate the severity of his situation to a girl he never dreamed of having to speak to while he’s basically seconds away from death. But even then, there’s a certain earnestness to the character that’s impossible not to like.
And there are dramatic moments, as she’s running through the pharmacy, dressed like the 90s stereotype of every emotionally unavailable love interest, and yet somehow truly into this, trying to find the medicine that will literally save his life. Funnily enough, we don’t know if she’s going to make it in time – we don’t know if this story is meant to end with him dead or not, because the short never really gives itself away regarding genre.
In fact, there’s even a pause before the short lets you off the hook. Because, of course there is.
But even though Tea is about all of those things, and it all adds to the magic of what Blake Rice has created, it isn’t all the short is. Above all, Tea is mostly about two people connecting in the strangest of circumstances, and about how, after having gone through all of that, they can continue on with what can probably be described as the weirdest meet-cute ever.
Because he doesn’t even lie about what he was doing before he was stung. Instead, he just admits he was in a corner, practicing how he would talk to her. And it’s funny because he has talked to her now. More than that. And there’s a story there now, the camera makes it clear. They’re right in focus, just like they were when the story started. Except then, they were two separate people.
Now, they still are, of course, because we don’t become one, but they are in the same frame. Part of the same story, at least. What that story will be next is not for this short to tell us. This is just the beginning. And what a good beginning it was.
Tea was a Cannes 2024 Short Film Official Selection and it is set to screen at the HollyShorts Film Festival.
