Max White
- Jun 18, 2021
- 2 min read

Laundro-Matt short film review

★

Starring: #AliceCutler #RobertOppel #GaryTeperman

Film review by: Max White

There’s this strange thing that happens while you watch Laundro-Matt where you think, no, you believe, that what you’re watching is a porno.

A woman goes to a laundrette in sweaty running gear to write her latest screenplay because her layabout boyfriend is hanging around at home for the weekend. At said laundrette she meets a man (called Matt (Robert Oppel), hence Laundro-Matt) who can only be described as a Spike impersonator (that’s the chiseled, white-haired villain from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and they hit it off, they flirt a bit and they even play a game of Would You Rather where one of the questions is, inevitably, about sex.

Then another strange thing happens, and you realise that this isn’t a porno but you wish it was. This was a bizarre – and not in the good way – non-event from the start, and the ending only left me wondering: what was the point?

Is this supposed to poke fun at horror tropes? Liz (Alice Cutler) does actually say, “I feel like we’re in a bad horror movie.” Is it supposed to be some sort of dark comedy? Nope, don’t think so, it would need laughs for that. Maybe it’s supposed to be a film that plants an idea in our heads: What would our guardian angel tell us to change in our lives if they could pop down and see us? The fact is, no one cares because no one’s watching. At least, no one’s watching what director Gary Teperman wants us to watch.

Liz’s only setting is shrieking incredulousness, which gets worse, not better, as the film goes on. (To come back to the Buffy reference, Alice Cutler does actually look like what I imagine Sarah Michelle Gellar looks like today.) There’s an exchange about Paul Rudd – ?! – and the writing here is bodged to the point where it could even be intentional, “So neither one of us has a phone. We’re fucked.”

Oh but if only! If someone had in fact been railed on top of a washing machine, this film might have made sense. At least that way someone may have deduced some pleasure from it. If Matt and Liz had submitted to one another this whole interplay may have culminated in a somewhat logical climax (pun intended). Instead, we have two strangers whom we care nothing for talking about nothing in a nothing room and in the end, nothing happens.