Love, especially unrequited and unspoken love makes us do some rather perverse things. Sometimes it will bring about a dark side within us and force us to confront it without our knowledge, and leave us oblivious to all logic and reason. Thus is the hook of Garcia’s utterly morbid and unsettling short drama. Very much in the vein of “The Weight of Water,” Gillian is a humble and rather meek woman who suddenly finds her soul mate one day at work. Rather unassuming at first, she sparks a conversation with her co-worker Jerry, and the two engage in a conversation about art that instantly brings her to the brink of sheer euphoric bliss which is crushed under the weight of Jerry’s confession that he has a girlfriend he’s about to marry.
Riley Rose gives a fantastic performance as this young artist who finds herself broken in two once she finds her double and discovers he can never belong to her, and we witness the instant deterioration of all her senses upon this discovery, which Rose delivers with utter finesse. Her transformation from a quiet office worker to a tragic obsessed artist is breathtaking, and she rapidly becomes a threatening presence with an instantaneous breakdown we never see, but know is occurring.
Though a little under ten minutes Garcia alludes to the background of Gillian, as this young girl constantly heartbroken and disappointed, who has her world corrupted by a man she can never have and the woman she knows will never step aside to let her have him. She knows the woman Jerry loves is every bit her superior even though she shares no common interest as Gillian does with Jerry, and this brings about an awfully erratic reaction that leads to one of the more disturbing climaxes in a short film I’ve seen in a while. “A Portrait of Envy” is the view of obsession and passion and the dangerous things we’re capable of in the heat of these raw emotions. Simplistic and yet long lasting in its originality and disturbing finale, “A Portrait of Envy” is a wonderful and well acted little drama thriller that works thanks to the writing, tight direction, and stand out performance from Riley Rose.