Make Me a Pizza (2024) Short Film Review
You have never seen something like Make Me a Pizza.
Talia Shea Levin’s short film is an absurdist and steamy approach to porn and porn tropes that uses pizza and its ingredients as a backdrop to a simple story that’s only possible and probable in adult films from an era when some of them had something resembling a plot. This is funny enough to make your day, and it will probably make you snicker a few times. But what follows is a whiplash of a development, all taking place inside a fantasyland of cheese, fat, and toppings. Yeah, you have never seen something like this, and most likely never will.
In the film, shot in analog video and with a beautiful aspect ratio that will appeal to fans of nostalgia-based movies, a delivery guy arrives at a woman’s doorstep. She makes enough advances to let the audience know they’re stuck in a ‘70s porn film. He still doesn’t see that she has no intention of paying with money. When he finally does, Make Me a Pizza confirms the kind of film it is.
They use pizza slices where genitals should be. They swim in cheese and fat, and their bodies become one with the pizza, until their bodies get stuck together in an orgy of cheese and flesh that makes you think you’re trapped in a nightmare. All this is beautifully shot by a director who’s confident enough to make such a film. Fortunately, the real story to be digested is pretty clear. This erotic film is twisted and violent and should not make you want to eat, but weirdly, it may drive you to get the phone and order a pizza right away. Is that acceptable? Apparently, in Talia Shea Levin’s world, such distinction is boring and unnecessary.
Make Me a Pizza requires viewers to let go of standards, decency, and traditional narratives. It invites you inside a dreamlike setting (or a nightmare, depending on your tastes and whether pizza makes you nauseous) and asks a bizarre question: Is pizza enough? Is the concoction of such a fine plate enough to satisfy capitalist needs and, why not, the primal need to touch flesh? In the end, you will get your answer, and hopefully by that moment you will have relaxed enough to rest in the hands of a filmmaker and crew who decided enough was enough and went for an extreme twist on everything that makes movie sex arousing.
