Omeleto

THE ORNAMENT | Omeleto

A young girl gives a gift. THE ORNAMENT is used with permission from Jinjara Mitchell. Learn more at https://instagram.com/jinjara. Tessa is a young girl whose class is preparing for the holiday season. She's already made an ornament, which she sweetly gifts to her entrepreneur mother, Luna. She also has to complete an assignment to share her family’s traditions with her class. But when her mother becomes the subject of a magazine cover profile, Tessa discovers the gap between the manicured facade of a loving family and the harsh emotional reality. Directed and written by Jinjara Mitchell, this quietly powerful short explores the emotional spaces between childhood innocence and familial pain, as a young girl is forced to confront a difficult truth about her home life and her mother. Fitting for a film about maintaining appearances, the film has an initial visual elegance and resplendence that reflects both the holiday season and the luxuriousness of the family home that makes up Tessa's world. The warm lights and cozy domestic settings have a charm, especially when viewed up close and in detail by a child. But any semblance of cozy comfort is ruptured when Luna enters the picture, widening it to reveal the emptiness of the home and the hollowness of the emotions within it. Luna is tightly-wound, preoccupied and not quite present with her young daughter, who is touchingly eager for her mother's attention and approval. There's something deeply brittle in Luna, though the traditions she tells Tessa to write for her assignment are resplendent with love and connection, and Tessa is eager for this vision to unfold. But when her mother is promised an interview, it only makes clear that illusions are the only thing Luna values: Luna is determined to paint herself as a dynamic businesswoman and loving mother of an ideal child, and she will do anything to make that happen. As the interview finally happens, Luna's controlling side comes out, and we're privy to her manipulations, though Tessa innocently goes along with everything to please her mother. But when the interview doesn't quite go Luna's way, the mask comes off. Luna drinks heavily and becomes unhinged, taking out her rage and disappointment on her daughter; though she never hits her daughter, the verbal and emotional battering is hard enough to watch. As Luna, actor Nathalie Boltt's performance is brave in its ugliness, revealing the core of a woman whose loathing and entitlement coalesce into something deeply disturbing, while as her daughter, young actor Remy Marthaller is both fragile, vulnerable yet always hopeful that her mother will finally love her. That hope is heartbreaking, and then devastating when Tessa realizes how deeply her mother is willing to betray and hurt her. She also realizes she has a choice to tell others about it -- or continue living the lies she's been conditioned to protect, imprisoning her within her mother's illusion. Tessa's choice at the end of THE ORNAMENT is wrenching but not surprising, especially to anyone who's loved someone whose actions are abusive and cruel. Based on the writer-director's own experience, the film understands the profound betrayal in how the bond between parents and their vulnerable, often adoring children is taken advantage of and used to hide abuse and cruelty. One senses it will take time for Tessa to unravel the situation; it's the first step in what may be a long path to extricating herself and making sense of it all. It's the first crack in the illusion, one that will fall apart eventually -- and hopefully set Tessa free.