Judy’s arms can be seen wrapped around their partner Cleo (Jackie Abbott) in the opening scene of “Romance Package for Two” as the two are awakened by an alarm clock, not entirely ready to get up for another day at the love motel they run together where all the upkeep is on them. A place for one-night stands, the couple has built something more lasting, yet as Carlen May-Mann’s beautifully somber short wears on, you wonder if rather than a tender embrace at the start, you’re actually seeing Judy (Tallie Medel) hold Cleo back as she looks less than enamored with the daily grind of cleaning up after guests and has to wonder if her relationship has gone as stale as all the other trash she’s tasked with taking out. She can’t help but be intrigued then with Candy (Emma Maddock), a dominatrix who has made it a regular stop with clients and exhibits a freedom that seems to be sorely missing from her own life.
Beyond the eye candy of the setting with its heart-shaped mirrors and hot tubs — and all the fun that production designer Lisa Loew and costume designer Jessica Sheehan have with the kitschy locale and characters inside, the love motel proves a savvy one as well in suggesting some obvious and idealized form of romance when there’s far more to it than that as May-Mann depicts in excruciating detail as Cleo looks like she’s ready to embark on a new adventure while Judy is content with where things stand now. A lovely simmering score from Chris Runes and Drake Tyler and the frisson of the grain from the 16mm film that “Romance Package for Two” was shot on express the tension in the air that exists as Judy and Cleo have less and less to say to one another, a sign of comfort in each other’s company perhaps but also an indication there may not be much left to talk about and whereas many narratives about the queer community involve living out loud, May-Mann’s film comes alive in its silences where Abbott gives a stirring turn as Cleo, working out what she really wants for her future.
After a celebrated festival run at NewFest, Palm Springs Shortest and the Florida Film Festival, “Romance Package for Two” recently premiered online – it can be seen right below – and we were thrilled to reconnect with May-Mann, who last impressed with the horror short “The Rat” and graciously took the time to talk about how she took over a Midwest motel for the production and captured the melancholy of a relationship that may have run beyond its natural expiration date, as well as all the small details that make it such a rich experience within its slim running time.
The last time we spoke, you were on your way to Chicago to look at locations. How did this all end up coming together?
Yeah, finding the hotel was obviously a big part of it. We visited a bunch of different places and we were so lucky that we found this place that had these two perfect rooms. The people who ran it were down for us to shoot there. And then I worked with a casting director named Michael D’Amato, who’s really great. I had seen Tallie [Medel] in Dan Sollett’s “Fourteen” the last time I was on the festival circuit, and I absolutely loved the movie, and I knew that [Tallie] was based in New York, and I’d seen them in a few shorts, so I asked Michael to reach out. We chatted and got along, so I cast them, and then we got a bunch of tapes for the other two. Jackie, who plays Cleo, submitted for Judy originally, but I already cast Tallie, so [after] we went through all the tapes for Cleo, and it wasn’t quite right, we started looking at the Judys, and [Jackie was] my favorite read for this part. And it’s funny because when I got on the phone with her, she [said] “I was really shocked you wanted me to read for this role because I feel like I’m Judy,” so it was cool for her and for me to work on this character who she didn’t identify with as much and get into that headspace.
Then Emma, who plays Candy was my favorite [for that role] right off the bat. What got me with her was that there’s a big inclination to play this character who’s a sex worker as presenting very sexy and Emma’s portrayal just felt very natural. She wasn’t trying to do that and that really stood out to me because it was important that’s the job of this character and not her identity. Emma very easily fell into that, and [the cast] all got along really well, which was awesome.
Was there anything you saw in their dynamics that changed the way you thought about it?
With the short, we didn’t have a chance to do a chemistry read or anything like that, but we went through a lot of rehearsing and it was very casual. What was really exciting to see play out was the physicality of it. Tallie is a very physical performer — they teach clowning, so a lot of their work comes from a very physical place. And that was really cool because it was really easy to create this dynamic where Judy’s trying to be more physical with Cleo, and you could feel that physicality from Tallie and then get to see Cleo, in very subtle ways, reject that, [which] really added something to this dynamic of one person in a relationship being able to sense that it’s not working and instead of talking about it, [their partner] is just trying to force it to not be the case in these small ways. [That physicality] helped get this sense of yearning, [which] was a cool thing to get to work with.
The costumes are a really subtle yet effective way to establish the characters and probably gave a lot to the actors to work with. What was it like to work on that aspect?
I worked a little bit in wardrobe when I first started in film and I think there’s so much potential to use costuming to tell the story. That’s always something I get really excited about, so I wrote into the script that Candy had some sort of flashy jacket. Originally, I wrote that it was set in winter, but it was just very clearly not going to look like winter when we were shooting, so it moved to the fall, but I wanted her to have this statement piece that she immediately stands out, and has this sense of style that is pretty absent from Cleo and Judy, and it is one of the things that makes her interesting from Cleo’s perspective, like [she’s this] shiny thing. And then with Cleo particularly, we were working with Jessica [Sheehan], the costume designer, on this idea that she had really stopped caring [about what she wore], like, “Who am I trying to impress?” We played out this story where after she meets Candy, the next few costumes we see her in are a little more fashionable and fit her a little better because she is trying to impress this person in these small ways. Then at the end, after Candy’s left, she’s just wearing this enormous T-shirt [feeling] dejected.
Jess’ idea was to have Cleo and Judy share clothes, so there are costume elements that one will be wearing in one scene and one will be wearing in another scene, which I love and feels like a very inherently queer thing. It also felt like a way of showing how they’ve lost their identities [when joining together as a couple] and are just stuck in this thing together.
The funniest costume thing was that Candy has this whole dominatrix getup and we worked really hard on it and had so much fun putting it together. But then you definitely don’t see it because I [thought] she wouldn’t step outside [in this outfit]. She would put on this robe, so underneath the robe there’s this amazing costume. But I think that was really helpful for Emma to put together as a useful way of developing the character. That’s always something that I think is easy to overlook — the importance of costuming, especially when you’re working with a really small budget. You don’t have as much prep time as you would like, but there’s so much you can do with these really small choices.
You mention writing it for the winter and it definitely has a melancholy feeling because of the season – did the weather end up cooperating?
I’m about to jinx myself, but I’ve always had pretty good luck with weather. We shot in late May/early June and it was pretty pleasant. You really can’t tell, but we cheated the exterior. The rooms themselves are in a different part of the motel that we hid from the movie in one of those really dark hallways, so there was no natural light and not a lot of space, but our DP Justin and gaffer Caitlyn [Spiritus] did an amazing job with making it feel natural. And there wasn’t a lot of artificial light in the room, so it is mostly just their amazing work, creating consistency between the exterior and the interior, even though they were different spots and definitely very different in terms of light.
The whole soundscape of this is also quite interesting. You make great use of silences, but there’s also this great subtle score to complement the emotional undercurrent running through this. What was it like to work with?
Sound is the hardest thing for me. I don’t think about it as technically as I can think about other things, so I always put a lot of trust in my sound team. Deceptively, creating silences is something that’s so hard to do and there’s a scene — I think it’s the eyebrow scene where I didn’t want any score. I just wanted the tension to build in the silences, so worked so hard on it and it wasn’t quite clicking. Then my sound mixer Stosh [Tuszynski] added a very subtle air conditioner and immediately, it was perfect. It was just so bizarre. I could never think of that, just making convincing silences that feel, empty and hollow but not in a way that feels accidental.
Then with the score, I wanted this very melancholy feeling that didn’t feel melodramatic. We listened to Brian Eno as inspiration, and Candy has her own theme that I wanted that to be another thing to differentiate her. I also was excited about creating this symmetry with the score of starts with [this couple] in this rut and ends with them in this rut, and the score could communicate the arc of things is worse but the same. There’s a world in which you could end the movie thinking, “Oh, they’re about to get into a huge fight or break up tomorrow,” which was not what I was going for and it could’ve felt that way with different music choices, so returning to this very melancholy sound helps give that sense that this [relationship] is just going to go on like this and there are all these unspoken things. I think it’s just a very slow decline, and the score was really helpful with ensuring that tone landed.
It’s such an interesting place to leave audiences. What’s it been like taking this out into the world?
People have reacted really well, and actually sitting there watching it with an audience is terrifying to me, but my film professors were always saying, “You can’t know how an audience reacts until you see it,” so I’m just trapped there trying to learn something. [laughs] But it was received really well in theaters and every screening I was at got a big gasp when the eyebrows yanked off, which was amazing. If you can get an audience-wide reaction like that, it’s very, very exciting. NewFest was a really especially great experience because it was gratifying to talk with queer people after screening [who were saying] this kind of depiction of a queer relationship is hard to come by and to see that represented, so I was really happy with how people responded to it.