By Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/4/23 – The hilarious, sardonic, and often melancholy short film Goodbye Tango follows a married couple coping with a loss of a pet and not coping with the loudly ignored effects of their failing marriage. Writer-director Jason Laurits effortlessly uses death to highlight the transformations that can take place in our most intimate and vulnerable relationships.
Laurits aim is to showcase the universal ebbs and flows that can exist in marriage in Goodbye Tango without over explaining the couple’s sexuality in the film. Further, the way in which the hamster wheel is depicted is extremely symbolic of the monotony that goes on in an unhappy coupling. He illuminates in an interview with THT, “I didn’t make it about them being gay, it was more about them struggling through what universally couples struggle through; I find that more interesting.” Laurits continues, “They’re spinning the wheel; we’re kind of all doing that. The hamster has distracted Ruth from the cracks in her marriage, perhaps the cracks in her life. The joy of the hamster has also kept her from soaking things in. Once the hamster dies, she is sort of enlightened to these things going on around her that she really hasn’t picked up on, so in a sense, she has been spinning the wheel and thinking that she is getting somewhere when she really has been in stuck in place. With the death of the hamster, everything kind of gets brought to the surface.”
The push and pull in the dynamic serves to highlight just how difficult marriage can be when partners are on different pages in relationships and how that contention can grow and fester beneath the surface. Check local theatre listings for show times of this dynamic short film!
