(Working title)
Feature | Satire/horror
After dining at a trending « gut-healthy » restaurant, Frances experiences increasingly painful digestive issues. Judged healthy by multiple doctors, she begins to wonder if she's going mad or if her pain is part of a larger conspiracy.
Status: In ideation
Long-métrage | Satire/horreur
Après son passage dans un restaurant populaire axé sur la flore intestinale, Frances développe des troubles digestifs douloureux. Lorsque multiples médecins la déclarent en santé, elle commence à se demander si elle vire folle où s'il s'agit d'un véritable complot.
Statut: En idéation
ACT I
Laid-back stop-motion animator FRANCES HARRISON (25) has recently moved to Los Angeles from her small Canadian hometown. Work is okay, but she struggles to connect with the big city and its tide of show-business hopefuls. She finds solace in her craft: dark rooms, puppets, and miniature worlds.
One night, she reluctantly reunites with childhood-acquaintance-turned-aspiring-internet-sensation ODESSA (24, artificially pretty), whose health-obsessed posse drags her to an exclusive trending new restaurant pop-up, "SLIME", and yaps about the latest food fads and faux-pas all night long. Turned off by L.A.'s absurd diet and fitness culture, small-towner Frances returns home feeling particularly disconnected from this Hollywood-wannabe crowd.
The next few days, Frances finds herself productive, laser-focused and energized, and finishes her latest animation gig early. She uses this opportunity and élan to invite her cute neighbour GUS (27, a chubby gardener) for a "normal" dinner and drinks, but wakes up the next day feeling debilitatingly hungover. Despite not having had unreasonable amounts of alcohol, it takes her a few days to recover, and she returns to work with much less vigour than before. She throws up, and while she thinks nothing of it, we notice a drop of the weirdly iridescent bile forgotten on the bathroom tile.
ACT II
Over the next few weeks, Frances notices various recurring symptoms: from sharp stomach aches to unexpected ravenous binges. She stops drinking, and eventually books a medical appointment, but is immediately shut down by the doctor who blames her symptoms on "stress" and "big life changes", and recommends she simply "drink water and sleep more".
One particularly bad morning, she runs into Odessa, who in contrast, looks and sounds the best she's ever felt. Taking pity on Frances' state, Odessa invites her for brunch, where she serves her a dish from SLIME, the restaurant she had brought her to weeks ago. She reveals she's been obsessed with their low-calorie, nutrient-dense jello-like sculptural dish concept, and is doing sponsored content for them. Frances, while skeptical, is also desperate for relief from her symptoms and gives slime a chance. Coincidentally, Frances' symptoms appear to ease over the next 24 hours, allowing her another burst of productivity and confidence. She even books a pitch for a stop-motion music video for an emerging pop star - her biggest gig yet. Later, out for tacos with Gus, she second-guesses their food choice for a moment, but is quickly convinced otherwise, and enjoys her dinner.
Unfortunately, the symptoms soon return. Frances suffers from intense sweats and pains, undermining her work for the high-stakes music video. While in crisis at the grocery store, she is haunted by echoes of conversations with Odessa and her health obsessed friends, and considers products she'd have sworn off before: sea moss, castor oil, pea protein... were they right all along? Was she not taking care of her body properly? But after going gluten-free, lactose-free, keto, paleo, and every other diet under the sun, nothing seems to help. While she feels increasingly worse and loses weight rapidly, she's also complimented on her appearance by her co-workers, and feels torn about it all. She speaks about her pain to the on-set nurse, who while empathetic, believes it's just "nerves" and that it's "perfectly normal in this business". Back home, the drop of bile on the bathroom tile has started burning through the floor like acid.
On set, Frances' mind is scattered, her hands shaky, her work sloppy. While some people compliment her "glowing complexion", she's actually sweating profusely. She has to start over the animation multiple times, and is scolded for her unprofessionalism by the producers. During lunch break, after seeing one of Odessa's Slime-sponsored videos, she desperately heads to the SLIME pop-up, but the exclusive restaurant is fully booked. After a bit of a kerfuffle, Frances heads out, but not before swiftly snagging a client's big takeout bag. She eats her slime lunch in her car. This gives her the pain relief, boost and focus she needed, and she impresses the producers. Over the next two days, Frances fuels herself exclusively with the slime leftovers, excelling at work and becoming increasingly popular with the music video's cool crowd, even catching the eye of a hot designer on set, CHIHIRO (31). At the end of the day, she's hungry and out of slime, but infatuated by the attention from Chihiro, goes home with her, cancelling pizzas plans with Gus.
After a terrifying dream involving stop-motion worms, Frances wakes up in Chihiro's bed feeling worse than ever, but also more desired than ever by someone "out of her league". After an embarrassingly loud run to the bathroom, she skedaddles out of her house and runs to SLIME, but is surprised to find the lot vacated. She shamefully returns home, where a hurt Gus gives her the cold shoulder. Frantic and in pain, she calls Odessa to ask for more slime before her final day on set. When Odessa doesn't answer, she calls one of her influencer friends JARED (23) she had first met at SLIME. Jared, who sounds a bit unwell over the phone, agrees to meet her and gives her an address. Frances reaches the address to find that Jared has been staying at a rehab center. He reveals to her that he's been pretending to be a drug addict in order to stay at their facility and detox from Slime. Frances is shocked. She wants more information but the visiting hours are over.