Slamdance 2022 Film Festival – In Kafkas, Fran (Patsy Ferran) has an unhealthy obsession with the German-speaking 20th Century writer Franz Kafka. She’s determined to marry a man with the last name Kafka. It’s her dream, never mind finding a job. This short is a tale of loneliness that contains some surreal elements like Kafka’s fiction.

Set in Massachusetts in 1987, the short opens with a close-up of a stack of Kafka’s books. Fran gives a monologue about her last name, which also begins with K and thus, puts her in connection to the great writer, she thinks. Fran is an unemployed Ph.D. who spends too much time quoting everyone from Kafka, to Nietzsche, to anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. These scenes made me feel like I was back in one of my Ph.D. classes when my colleagues quoted the latest hip literary theorist. When she’s not doing that, Fran dials random men in Florida with the last name, you guessed it, Kafka. These scenes are funny but also heartbreaking, especially when the men reject her. Meanwhile, she racks up a $700 phone bill, to the ire of a relative giving her shelter.

I have to give credit to Nick Blake, who scripted the film with Robin Blake  and Marianne Wiggins. This short feels fairly polished. It has an oddly endearing and quirky protagonist and a few surreal moments that would make Kafka proud. Of course, there’s a cockroach, too. However, I wanted this to lean into surrealism like a Kafka story even more. Similar to a lot of the writer’s protagonists, Fran is a victim, to some extent, of larger societal forces, not necessarily bureaucracy but certainly, academia, which chewed her up and spit her out with no job prospects. The more she’s turned down, the more paranoid she becomes, stating at one point that she can’t go outside or they’ll kill her. I wanted more of this paranoia and bizarre sort of horror. I liked the shots of the black cats with menacing yellow eyes, too, and the strange meowing.

Overall, Kafkas reminds us that obsession can become unhealthy. There are flashes of Kafkaesque weirdness here, but the short would have benefited from a little more of that. I’m not saying Fran needed to wake up as a cockroach one day, but if you’re going to center as short around Kafka, then go wild. That said, this is a strong work, centered by Ferran’s performance as a terribly lonely, unemployed Ph.D. Oh, and kudos to Ferran for really pulling off that thick New England accent.

Kafkas screened as part of the 2022 Slamdance Film Festival.

7 Out of 10 Cockroaches