The Neighbors' Window

A woman with small children is worn down by her routine and by her husband. A young couple moves into the building across the street and never closes the curtains. She starts watching them: their freedom, their energy, their disordered lives. It runs about twenty minutes and all its weight is in the ending, where the question of who envies whom reverses, delivered in a single look with no explanation attached. Marshall Curry spent years making documentaries and this was his first fiction piece. The story is real, drawn from an account Diane Weipert gave on the podcast Love and Radio. It won the Oscar for best live action short in 2020. Its limit is the length. The characters have no past, the relationship has no detail, and the effect depends on one idea. A viewer who guesses that idea early is left without a surprise. Who it is for: people who like short films and plain observation of ordinary life. Who it is not for: anyone wanting depth and development.