A young housewife in a seemingly perfect marriage becomes obsessed with solving a mystery in her daily newspaper, only to discover that the clues lead to dark secrets hidden within her own home - and her husband's dangerous past.
A puzzle page is a strange thing to find in a thriller, because a puzzle is a promise: somebody has hidden an answer where you can reach it, and has decided in advance that you are clever enough. The Newspaper takes that promise and makes it sinister. Jane's mornings are coffee and quiet and the paper, the one part of the day that belongs to her, and it is inside that safe ritual, in the Solve the Mystery column, that somebody starts telling her things about her own house.
In an ambiguous world where 1950s aesthetics blend with modern elements, Jane, a young housewife, leads a quiet, secluded life in the suburbs.
Every morning, after her husband, William, has headed off to work, Jane enjoys the ritual of reading the newspaper over her coffee.
It is on one of these mornings that she stumbles upon a mysterious 'Solve the Mystery' section in the newspaper. Gradually becoming obsessed with the mystery, Jane pieces together the puzzle and begins to uncover dark secrets about William's past.
Her seemingly perfect life begins to unravel and she must decide how far she is willing to go to uncover the truth.
The period setting is deliberately unfixed. The look is mid-century and the details are not always, and that choice does real work in eleven minutes. A wife alone in a suburban house with the day to fill, no money of her own and a husband whose working life is a closed door, is a 1950s arrangement. The film declines to date it firmly, which stops the audience filing the whole thing under history and moving on.
Eleven minutes, from a screenplay by Jennifer James, directed by Gabriel Athanasiou and produced by Imogen Cooper. Jennifer James also appears in Yoreflix Stories, our interview series, talking about her writing.