Naomi Shroff-Mehta is a graduate of University of Southern California's MFA program in Film and Television Production, and is an industry, student Emmy, and student Cannes award-winning filmmaker. She is originally from Washington D.C, and is a graduate of Scripps College, where she earned her undergraduate degree in Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience and Media Studies. After graduating from Scripps and working in neuroscience research at Caltech, Naomi realized that storytelling was her true passion, and decided to pursue a production career in film and television. As a queer Indian-American director, editor, and producer, Naomi strives to create and work with diverse casts and crew – she is determined to truly create spaces where talented artists from any background can feel nurtured, respected, and celebrated for sharing authentic stories. “Lovely” is the second short she directs, which she also wrote.
Lovely is screening at New Filmmakers LA
The movie begins with a mother straightening her daughter's hair, before she places a skin-lightening cream on her face. The ‘recipient' Ria, a 16-year-old Indian-American girl, works at her family's grocery store, having to hear her mother's constant nagging about staying as white as possible, which also means avoiding the sun as much as possible. One day, the two of them go into the basement of the store, since her mother is afraid to let her daughter alone, as there is no electricity there. Despite the urges to stay at the door, Ria does go into the basement and finds a cosmetics product, “Pretty Lovely'. She gets chastised by her mother, and a bit later, while eating dinner, they see and ad about the particular whitening ointment, which Ria also discovers is on her mom's boudoir, while later on, she sees her applying it to herself, before she is ousted from the door.
Eventually Ria decides to go back to the basement of the store to pick a bottle for herself, but there she finds a mysterious woman who seems to have prepared a feast of sorts. The woman, who implies that maybe this whole thing is a dream, eventually offers her a cream that will make her fairer and whiter skin for life. Initially, the whole thing seems to work, with Ria even receiving praise for her newfound whiteness. Dreams, however, occasionally turn to nightmares.
Naomi Shroff-Mehta does a very interesting thing with her 17-minute short, by starting it as a family drama and ending it as a horror in order to accentuate her comments even more. In that fashion, the whole concept of whiteness Asian and Asian-American have to deal in the US in order to avoid becoming the victims of prejudice transforms from a story about the tension between a mother and a daughter to a true nightmare. This approach definitely makes the remark more pointed, but also adds to the entertainment the movie offers, also because Elyse Ahmad is excellent in the role of The Woman.
At the same time, the visual and make-up effects also work quite well, and along with the sound, make the horror part of the movie work particularly well, especially since Ted Beck's editing and Catalina Parra's cinematography add even more to the terror the last part of the movie emits. On the other hand, the close-ups are too many here, and become somewhat annoying after a point. The editing, though, implements a relatively fast pace throughout, which definitely works for the style of the film.
Ashwini Ganpule as Ria highlights both her perplexiveness for the way her mother treats her and her eagerness to please her, which is what throws her in the clutches of The Woman in the end. Susie Abraham as Ma is convincing as the seemingly unfairly strict mother, who does have her reasons though. The chemistry of the two is quite good too, with their relationship also resulting in a comment about parents occasionally harming their children by being overprotective.
“Lovely” is a competent short that highlights Shroff-Mehta's directorial abilities, both through the way she handles a difficult transition, and for the way she manages to eloquently present her comments in such a short time.
