New Strains

This cheerfully humdrum rom-com presents a very homemade slice of first-lockdown life. But can its squabbling couple make it through a mysterious pandemic? Co-writers and filmmakers Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan play Kallia and Ram: young lovers vacationing to New York just as the pandemic unfolds. They’ve already descended into petty name-calling when the travel ban prolongs their trip indefinitely, trapping them in Kallia’s uncle’s apartment.

New Strains is as much a relatable account of the first lockdown as it is a sketch of its particular effects on this peculiar couple. Semi-improvised and shot on a Hi8 camcorder that Shaw and Kamalakanthan found during their own real lockdown, its grainy VHS footage nails the frustrations of personal and creative helplessness in quarantine. A production defined by the same constraints it depicts, it similarly makes the best of a bad situation.

All of which makes it a uniquely authentic pandemic film – full of neat, oddly poignant touches that capture the highs and lows of lockdown relationships. Failing to connect meaningfully over FaceTime gym sessions, dreams of finding lost trousers in the park, bathwater spilling under the shower curtain as the second person gets in. All these sharply observed moments construct a portrait of two lives lived too close, in a shrinking domestic world: lives trying and failing to become one.

– Callum McLean