Cemetery gatekeeper Mino (Thomas Ducasse) spends his days caring for the dead and offering comfort to mourners who come to grieve their loved ones. Hiding a nasty wound on his chest, Mino is also coming to terms with the loss of his secret lover. As he navigates his own grief, Mino comes face-to-face with Maya (Julie Morel), the wife of his lover and the two are pulled towards each other as they deal with their respective heartache.
‘Anapidae (Call Me)’ is an interesting short that prioritises aesthetic above all else. The 44-minute feature is filmed on Super-8 with elements of VHS footage worked into the cut. The end result is something that looks interesting, and feels like it was made back in the late 80s/early 90s. It also serves as a distraction to the main story, which has some meat to the bones but not quite enough to really hook you in.
Mino is hiding a few secrets but it’s the presence of a giant spider that feeds from him that is the biggest of them all. The spider, of course, is a metaphor for grief and it appears when Mino is struggling with his devastation over the death of his secret lover. Anyone who has been through any kind of grief, particularly the loss of a loved one, will know the feeling of something eating away at you and the film captures that element in an interesting way.
Maya’s arrival throws Mino’s world into chaos, and it heads off in an unexpected direction. I wasn’t wholly sold on how this part of the story played out. While I understand that mutual grief can bring people together, Mino and Maya’s evolution from strangers to bed fellows doesn’t feel authentic. For Mino, he has had to keep his relationship secret whereas Maya has been able to be open about her relationship. That immediately puts the two at odds and you wonder how much Maya knows when the two characters first meet.
The performances are, for the most part restrained. Thomas Ducasse encapsulates a character who is consumed by grief very well but there’s not a lot of variance to the performance. Similarly Julie Morel doesn’t get enough material to move beyond her grieving widow character and really make an impression. The audience should feel awkward about these two characters, given their unspoken shared history, but it’s hard to tap into the emotional side of the story as the material is under-baked.
Writer and director Mathieu Morel has crafted an interesting exploration of grief but I felt that the film lacked substance. I wanted to know more about Mino’s history with his lover before being expected to feel emotionally attached to the film’s most shocking scene, where Mino gets intimate with a skeleton. The shock value replaces the emotional build-up needed for that moment. It’s part and parcel of a short that the narrative has to be condensed but ‘Anapidae (Call Me)’ missed a bit too much to fully realise its potential.
Cast: Thomas Ducasse, Julie Morel, Fabienne Berthaud Director: Mathieu Morel Writer: Mathieu Morel Certificate: 16+ Duration: 44 mins Released by: NQV Media Release date: 7th November 2025 Buy or rent ‘Anapidae (Call Me)’ now
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