SYNOPSIS
A South Asian diasporic woman, tired of dating people who can’t keep up with her mutable cultural identity, decides to “frankenstein” together the ideal partner.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
“Stitched” is a story that speaks to the core of me, as an immigrant woman in America. It speaks to the hurdles and insanity we experience in constantly code switching and trying to find people who understand us in all our complex diasporic identity. But my favorite part of this story is that it provides this refreshingly relatable take on love and identity whilst bringing us a good healthy and entertaining dose of horror and comedy. In keeping with this, our visual approach is twofold: pristine, highly saturated, low contrast shots for the romantic moments of the story, and high-contrast, low saturation shots to service the suspense and eeriness of the subject matter. In both cases, our aesthetic will be deliberately stylized and intense, immersing the audience into the emotions our protagonist experiences. The often ludicrous visuals of a Frankensteined man also creates a comedic contrast with the realistic and dry dialogue in the film. This contrast is the perfect illustration of the tone of our film. The film’s dry comedic tone and eerie Frankenstein motif is reflected in sparse, jarring bursts of music: think droning, atonal strings à la “The Favourite,” at times accompanied by rock guitars, reminiscent of The Strokes. Select romantic moments are undermined by the cutting strings, which only get more dissonant and wild as Leela pursues her experiment with increasing fervor. Ultimately, we make use of all of the cinematic tools available to us, in order to fully immerse our audience in Leela’s deliciously maddening experiment and, most importantly, her delectable character arc.