{"id":49149,"date":"2025-08-09T06:00:43","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T10:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=49149"},"modified":"2025-08-06T23:26:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T03:26:14","slug":"a-nice-lady-short-film-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/09\/a-nice-lady-short-film-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nice Lady (Short) (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An artist going for a run in Central Park encounters two free spirits, and later invites them to stay with her in her luxury apartment, reigniting old traumas and wounds she hasn’t quite addressed.<\/p>\n

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I try to go into all films with an open mind, whether it’s a short, a feature, a drama, a horror film, or anything in between. My most common turn off with a project comes from an unsettling behavior on behalf of one of the characters, and that’s unfortunately what happens with A Nice Lady. While it certainly looks wonderful, and it tells a lot of story in such a short runtime, it unfortunately branches into territory that feels weirdly pretentious, and even worse, predatory. While the concept of female predators is something often not touched upon in film, that doesn’t mean they should be martyrized when they do appear, and that’s what is happening here. Our lead character is meant to be relatable and touching for her brokenness and traumas, and yet I couldn’t help but view her as a problematically predatory woman, preying upon a younger couple in need of a place to stay under the guise of being \u201ca nice lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

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While I commend writer and director Jessie Weber Kass for trying to do something new and addressing an underrepresented character via a woman who is exploring her sexuality and trying to grow and heal at the same time, it just didn’t work for me. Perhaps I’m not the right target audience, even though I’m typically a fan of films for underrepresented groups, especially the LGBTQ community. There’s just something here that doesn’t come through correctly. In fact, the depiction of these characters is almost more harmful and exploitative than it is helpful and endearing. I want to see characters growing and adapting in a world that accepts them, not one where their entire identity boils down to predacious sexuality. Especially not one that frames it up as being a \u201ctreat\u201d for the sole male character in the main cast.<\/p>\n

The performances are good for what they can do with the material. Molly Bernard is decent in the lead role, despite her character being really off-putting and unlikeable, though I can’t fault her for it, as that’s definitely a script level issue. Then there’s Pearl Amanda Dickson and Lucas George Nieves, who unfortunately wind up looking like terrified animals in cages as they essentially indenture themselves into a weird sexual servitude in return for a place to stay. It’s just an all around odd attempt at illustrating characters of varying backgrounds and sexualities that winds up coming through the performances as creepy and a little gross.<\/p>\n

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It looks good, though. The cinematography is done very well by the Director of Photography, Valentina Caniglia. And I really appreciate the fact that the film is so female powered from behind the camera. I wanted to love the film, I really did. But the fact that there’s so much \u201cmale gaze lesbianism\u201d and male fantasy crap on display here that it turns me completely away from even the technical accomplishments.<\/p>\n

A Nice Lady is a pretty package that disguised a rather ugly premise, and instead of acknowledging the predatory behavior, we’re expected to not only enjoy it, but applaud it, and it just doesn’t gel for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An artist going for a run in Central Park encounters two free spirits, and later invites them to stay with her in her luxury apartment, reigniting old traumas and wounds she hasn’t quite addressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[302,2123,937],"class_list":["post-49149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-drama","tag-lgbtq","tag-short"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49149"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49171,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49149\/revisions\/49171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}