Month to Month
The programmer's note
A one-location short that keeps finding another gear. Venkataraman writes real estate the way other people write courtroom drama, and the structure does the work: six showings, each shorter than the last, until the film stops making the joke. Dev Raghunathan shot it and holds the kitchen table wide the whole time, so you watch the strangers instead of the reactions. The broker is the best supporting performance in the catalogue this spring.
The film
Anjali has been month to month on Nostrand Avenue for two years, which the lease permits and the new management company regrets. They are raising it. In the meantime the apartment has to be shown, and the notice says only that she must provide access. It does not say she has to leave. So she does not. Across one Saturday, six sets of prospective tenants tour a one-bedroom while its current occupant sits at the kitchen table with a coffee and answers their questions honestly. The radiator. The upstairs neighbour. What the management company did and did not do about the ceiling. Venkataraman shoots it as a series of arrivals, same door, same hallway, different people, and the comedy tightens each time as the broker's patience thins. The sixth showing is not funny. Twelve minutes, one apartment, and a very precise account of what it costs to stay somewhere.
