Your Reality

Would you let a stranger pay for your coffee shop order? Many women are wary of such things, especially when the stranger is a man. It’s an easy way to find oneself with unwanted entanglements. But what if your card isn’t working, you really need that order to avoid making a bad impression in a new job, the man is light-hearted about it and you also find him attractive? For Alicia (Tatjana Anders), Mark (Kyle James) seems like a godsend. She’s relieved to have his help, and happy to arrange to meet again so that she can pay him back.

At first it seems like the beginning of an ideal relationship. She goes to his place, a much nicer apartment than her own, and admires some of the work he has created as a professional photographer. He cooks lobster risotto from scratch and when they talk he really seems to listen and understand her. Sure, he complains about her being late, but that seems fair enough. A few weeks down the line, when she’s moving into his place, he criticises her for having so many boxes, but she can see how that’s at odds with his minimalist aesthetic, and she doesn’t want to cramp his style.

They don’t really have any arguments until he expresses unhappiness about her desire to have dinner with a friend she hasn’t seen for two years. It clashes with plans they had made. She feels that he’s being unfair, but that she can ride it out. She tells her colleague Soph (MJ Lee) that they have silly arguments. Every couple does, right?

Alicia doesn’t really have much experience of that sort of thing. Her mother has always told her that she won’t get a guy because she’s selfish. She works in marketing and is interested in human psychology, but like many people she mentally separates these things from her personal experiences. She’s probably never reflected on the way that she’s been primed for abuse, not just by Mark but by her experience of growing up as a woman in a society that has taught her to prioritise being considerate, forgiving, nice. In an early conversation she and Mark agree that it’s the little things that matter, but then she dismisses every incident as a little thing, and doesn’t notice that there are more and more of them, each one slightly bigger than the last.

When should she start questioning the situation? When he tells her that she got too drunk at a party and made a fool of herself? When they’re celebrating his career success and he starts persuading her that she should give up the job she loves? When he tells her that he thinks she has a problem, and suggests that she start taking pills?

A tightly structured short film designed as a warning, Your Reality – a title given additional relevance by a startling final scene – deftly avoids the clichés of domestic abuse dramas. This isn’t about violence or even physical intimidation. Mark rarely raises his voice; the effect it has when he does makes it clear how effectively he’s broken her down ahead of that. Many of his actions could be those of someone who is genuinely concerned upon seeing a loved one caught in a downward spiral – but where did that spiral start?

Anders’ performance is so fluid, so perfectly judged that over the course of 20 minutes she carries us through a significant psychological shift without doing anything that seems abrupt or out of character. Alicia is the same person throughout and yet when we step back for a moment, it’s obvious that something has drastically changed, that her confidence and ability to make rational assessments of her circumstances have vanished. Set primarily in Mark’s apartment, with its calming neutral tones, this is in essence a theatrical piece, but uses mid-shots and close-ups to keep us tightly bound to its heroine’s shifting perspective. Initially glossy and easy to watch, it gradually becomes more uncomfortable, but viewers too might take a while to notice why their mood is shifting. Some will go away with a new take on events in their own lives.

Reviewed on: 18 May 2025