If the short film ‘Rural‘ has a great quality, it lies in the naturalness with which the director captures the way a love relationship is born. However, we are not facing a drama with extreme psychological inflections, although Amelia Annen is aware that she is approaching what many viewers would call a “forbidden love”. In other words, the short film focuses on the emotional connection between two young women, tenderly tracing the beginning of this spontaneous affinity. The project lacks the ostentation of many cinematic pro-LGBTQ+ manifestos, and this is further proof of the director’s intuition that avoids putting such a love story in front of the canons of “normality”. In this micro-harmony, there is, therefore, no censorship of a puritanical society, even if the condescending patriarchal stereotypes about “girls kissing each other all the time” are not ignored by the director. This subtle observation is not necessarily aimed at social criticism, but it is well enough articulated to capture the specifics of a retrograde mentality. What really matters, however, in this succinct exploration of a trio where she leaves him for other women is precisely that normalcy, devoid of stridencies, offering an authentic slice of life while avoiding the pattern of exceptional, larger-than-life heroes.
