Interior decorator Alice and college professor George have been married for fourteen years. They raise a son and a daughter together, and they are happily married in others’ eyes. One night, Alice waits at home for George to get back from work. What she gets is not only her husband, but also the news that he is going to leave them for an affair. The trivia of marriage life has used up all their passion; love burns into cinders in just a blink. And George is not sure about what is to come.

Review by Julie C. Sheppard:

The short film Cinders is a heart-rending story of communication breakdown. Off the top, the film uses a long silence of one the characters, the husband George, to make his eventual admission of infidelity even more dramatic and revelatory. He does not speak for over a minute of screentime with a one-sided conversation on the part of the wife, Alice. In advance of his first words, Alice’s lines and actions give clues to the husband’s reasoning for leaving her, such as her micromanaging him. 

When dialogue between them finally starts and George admits to the affair, you get the sense that important topics have never been expressed between them before, such as acknowledgement of their sexual incompatibility, and the fact that Alice seems unaware of some of the things that have bothered him, like her lack of passion and playfulness, and her always trying to take care of him in a parent-child type of way. 

The setting of the lovely residential home shows the external trappings of a together, well-heeled household. Both characters are neatly dressed and things seem tidy and organized. But looks are obviously deceiving. Even her admission that she always wanted to go to France, a place that George plans to take his new lover, shows how tuned out he is about his wife desires, and it seems like a fact that she has never told him before. 

Other than evening crickets, there are no other sounds under the action, which gives this emotionally painful short verisimilitude. The camera work also mirrors this true-to-life essence, with the pace and editing being very deliberate. The use of these elements in a slow, methodic way matches the tone of the couple’s relationship, one that is obviously suffering from a lack of connection that, in turn, leads the husband astray.