LiME: Joy Embodied

The 11-minute short LiME, debut film from writer/director/producer Donta Storey, is the wonderfully shot and emotionally impactful story of Deshawn, a timid high schooler who tries out for his school’s drill team. Through rapid ups and downs, he experiences both the joys and perils of being (as the film’s promotional materials put it) “the sweet amongst the sour.”

Hyperreal Film Club Co-Founder sat down with Donta to talk about their journey from actor to writer/director, how to make something you're proud of, and their upcoming projects. Watch that interview below:

The film builds its world around Deshawn (played by the talented Urian Ross). From the start, Urian’s meticulous yet natural-feeling physicality grounds us in Deshawn’s internal world. His apprehension around the tryouts is communicated through subtle physical cues — chewing on his lips, pulling his sleeves down around his hands, closing his body with arms across his chest, keeping his head down when talking to his mother or receiving instruction from the coach running the tryouts. When chastised by his mother at the start of the film after poking fun at her limes, he mutters, barely audible, “yes ma’am,” a deeply relatable moment to anyone who grew up in the south (or anyone with a strong matriarchal figure in their life, probably?).

His careful, closed body language sets up a strong counterpoint for the open joy that’s immediately apparent once Deshawn starts to perform his drill routines. The only non-ambient lighting in the film comes when Deshawn practices these moves alone in his room, red and green and purple washes bringing to mind countless scenes of parties and other unfettered revelry. Y’all, sorry to mention The Pandemic in a film review, but I must say. There’s something about watching this during quarantine that seriously punches up the impact of feeling joy through embodiment and full expression of self through synchronized physical movement.

The crux of the film comes in a scene that opens with Deshawn walking through an alley on his way home after the tryouts. He is seriously amped, full of energy, feeling himself! and he stops in front of a cracked mirror to repeat some moves and cheese for the camera. Now, straight away, the viewer thinks: wow, this is one of those moments where our protagonist, having confronted himself face to face in a cracked mirror, betrays some sort of internal turmoil, some indecision in moving forward… but here Deshawn seems so fulfilled! It quickly becomes clear that the film is inverting the trope, playing with our expectations and showing that the conflict here is not within. It is the world’s expectations and the sometime consequence of flouting them that Deshawn must come to terms with.

Soon, a police siren blares in the distance and Deshawn immediately shrinks down, wrapping an anonymous black windbreaker over his colorful drill uniform. It is tragic and telling that we have so much shared language as a culture around black bodies and sirens that the anxiety instantly ramps up to eleven in this moment, and it’s honestly a goddamn relief that no police presence ever materializes on screen. The anxiety is maintained and redirected, though, as we are drawn into a different (but still familiar) vicious encounter that engages the falling action of the piece.

Deshawn arrives home, bloodied and ready to fully give up his self-expression if it means escaping the ignorant abuse heaped on him by his world. His mother, a lover of the film’s titular limes, sits him down for a matriarchal pep talk. “Different isn’t wrong,” she hero-speeches. The reassurance and the image here — limes are good because they’re different — is a bit heavy-handed, but God, so is assault and the trauma that ensues. Sometimes a blunt instrument metaphor is simply the right tool for the job.

With our shared cultural language around conventions of story and identity, both fictional and too-fucking-real, we somehow know this story already. That means that the story beats aren’t the point, not exactly, anyway. What we get here is a fully realized community of support and healing, a film full of tightly crafted style and deep wells of empathy. As the film closes, we get one of those aughts-era indie film closings, where each character we’ve met along the way is collaged into a culminatory montage. Here, though, they are not coyly performing whimsical tasks but rather staring straight at you, at me, at the viewer. It’s almost a circle of support, a circle of power wrapped around you. Each of the folks we’ve met along the way comes together to invoke that most empowering of promises: “All hands on deck! You go out there and do your thing — we got you.”

Just desserts:

One of my favorite onscreen moments in the past couple of years is Damon’s audition scene in the first episode of Pose. I love that some of the moments in LiME capture that pure joyful energy!