Roommates (2022) Short Film Review
Aside from the film’s celebratory personality, Ashley Eakin’s Roommates is a blunt and fun statement of a message we really need to give and also listen to more often. Two girls, each with her own issue, discuss whether they should stay on a social level that tradition has placed them in. Angrily, frantically, and naturally, they decide they have to break the barrier and be like everyone else. It’s a speech that we, as a society that’s become more fragile than ever, are perhaps afraid to consider.
Izzy and Sophia are dorm-mates who have been put in the same dorm because they’re physically disabled. Sophia is in a wheelchair, and Izzy suffers from a condition that made her lose a leg. But when meeting each other they realize the union has sparked something very interesting. This random encounter is the beginning of something huge. The first station of their journey? Getting wasted and living freaking college.
Perhaps they will regret it the next day. Or maybe not.
Izzy and Sophia are radical figures in a comedy with more substance than you may imagine at first. Their attitude is enough to raise a hand in the discussion of peers being peers with no limits. What the film progresses to is hilarious, but Eakin never lets go of the original intention with a film like this.
The best? Eakin concedes power to the carriers of such an agenda. Kiera Allen and Kelsey Johnson star, and their characters fully embody their real “situation” (the actresses are disabled in real life). It’s controversial to use the term disabled, but for the purpose of the film’s consideration, it’s not really a big deal. After all, you will understand why it’s a relevant part of the film’s conversation after you hear first hand what the most affected by the term have to say. It’s illuminating in a direct and poignant way.
Fortunately, Eakin doesn’t approach the subject with too much seriousness and dramatics. This is no place for this. This is college, the vehicle of maturity that hits with much power those who aren’t prepared for this. The film is a reflection of intimate conversations that aren’t revealed frequently but that take place in every hall and dorm, and are powerful in modeling adulthood in a very accidental fashion.
With another script and in another industry, Roommates would suffer from being an excuse to show real disabilities in the real world of college. But Eakin does it best with her clever decision to stray away from grounded discussions by secondary characters. In Roommates will is powerful and it’s in the hands of two girls who have gone from brave to regular under their own terms. Their adventure is mischievous and naughty, but it’s not because they are disabled and attempt to be like everyone else. It’s because they have decided to celebrate life the way college requires you to.
Stay for the credits. You’ll be surprised.
