Leslie's Emotional Conversation

Bruce Von Stiers

There is a new short film with the title of Yu-Yi. There is also a Mandarin saying, Yu-Yi. Translated it means “the desire to feel intensely again.”

The film deals with raw emotions and the struggle for both acceptance and attraction.

Leslie is a young woman, sitting in her bedroom. She is making a video on her phone. Basically, it's her providing an emotional dialog for her friend.

Leslie has come out as gay to this friend. But now she feels anguished and hurt for a lot of reasons. The main one is that when she came out to her friend, the friend rejected the idea. The friend made it about themselves and wouldn't even let her utter the word “gay.”

And that she is full of introspection about her friendship and relationship with this person. That her friend throws out this ridiculous story about how they've had other friends come out to them. But Leslie asks if the friend has treated the others like they are treating her.

And that what should have been a moment of acceptance of her being gay was quite the opposite. The only person who was not happy for Leslie coming out was the person she's addressing this conversation to.

And at the core of this conversation is the notion that Leslie and the other person are attracted to each other. But the other person can't, or won't, acknowledge that fact. That her friend is being perceived as queer during auditions and quit doing them. And a few other things come out about this friend, who apparently is trying so hard to distance herself from the notion of being gay.

And then additional hurt comes into the dialog as we learn that the friend keeps telling Leslie about people she's sleeping with, which is probably a bunch of lies. The friend just doesn't want to admit the attraction between them.

The film was written, directed and starred Leslie Susanna Campbell. She is making her directorial debut with this film. Leslie appeared as a dancer in an Ayla music video. She also starred in the short action film, City of Angels, City of Vampires!

The cinematographer was Gray ‘Danni' Ma. Danni was the cinematographer for the series Doug And Dog and Affinity Under Darkness. The video editing was done by Gregory Shark.

The sound editing was by Jeffrey Dobbins, who also worked on Affinity Under Darkness.

Yu-Yi is full of raw emotion. Even though this is just a one-sided conversation, you can see and hear the anguish that Leslie is going through. The hurt, the grief and finally the realization of self-worth can all be seen and felt through the words and expressions in Leslie's video to her friend.

The film is currently making the rounds at film festivals.

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© 2024 Bruce E Von Stiers