Suicide Kale

I don’t know how to talk about Suicide Kale without damning it with faint praise. The film plays within its limited means and seems well-planned out. But it’s too small and amateur a movie for me to feel any other way but mild about it.

Suicide Kale focuses on two lesbian couples hanging out together. Jasmine and Penn are a new couple, coming over for a meal at Billie and Jordan’s place. Early on, we get glimpses of some minor fractures in both relationships. But the crux of the movie occurs when Jasmine and Penn sneak off to hook up in Billie and Jordan’s bedroom. Their plans of sneaky sex are derailed when Jasmine finds a very personal note in the bedroom, a note which Jasmine is pretty sure is a suicide note. The new couple now has to pretend like nothing is wrong while also trying to find out which one of their hosts wrote the concerning note.

Suicide Kale’s biggest strength is in its dialogue. This is a good, if very blatant example of how to use subtext of dialogue to tell a different story than what’s on the surface. Neither Jasmine nor Penn is exactly subtle in their attempts to determine who wrote the note but nor do they just come out and say it either. When writing dialogue for a story or film, it’s usually a bad idea to have characters say exactly what they mean or what they want. It’s often not how real people talk, nor does it lend to good long-form story work. Suicide Kale realizes that and works within that belief to create both funny moments and an ongoing small mystery through the film’s short runtime.

However, the film doesn’t spend its entire runtime on Penn and Jasmine trying to solve this mystery. The conversation between the couples does veer off into other tangents and funny observations about life. On the one hand, this is realistic to how most real-life conversations work. On the other hand, a lot of the content of these moments isn’t quite funny enough to make up for the fact that these conversations can feel a little aimless. Suicide Kale does hit the point from me where I think that if I wanted to have a dinner party with a lesbian couple and just make vaguely humorous life observations, I could just go do that for real. Suicide Kale doesn’t really improve on the reality of hanging out with some moderately funny people while eating a meal. So if that’s the case, I would prefer it focus in on the mystery.

Outside of the writing and story structure, there’s not much to write home about with Suicide Kale. This isn’t a story that needs amazing camerawork, it’s a small-scale dialogue-based comedy. And that’s good, because the camerawork is not great. The instincts that the film shows for dialogue scenes are much less present when it comes to visual storytelling. It’s not bad enough to bring down the film, but it doesn’t do anything to elevate it either.

In a film as small as Suicide Kale, it’s pretty important that the elements that are possible to achieve are done excellently. Because you can’t hide anything behind visual flare or stunt casting. Story and dialogue takes front and centre. And I can’t say that Suicide Kale’s story and dialogue are fully bad. But I’ve also seen better and more importantly, funnier movies within the same vein. Suicide Kale is fine. It has some minor laughs, mild intrigue and some genuine empathy at its centre. But it’s not exactly a standout in any way.

Overall rating: 5.5/10

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