Thoughts:
This is a very short film inspired by a six-word micro-short story attributed to Ernest Hemingway.
The opening credits roll over shots of a bookcase with family pictures—a baby, a little boy, and a wedding, among others. The viewer hears “Suo Gan,” a lovely traditional Welsh lullaby sung by the Choir of King’s College. It ends on a pink memo: “Fuck C.”
Sara (Adria K. Hernandez) sits at a word processor trying to type an ad while John (Juan Carlos Hernández), her husband, makes noise working on a skateboard. When she complains that he’s distracting her, he apologizes and says, “I just want to make sure the next person who rides this doesn’t break a bone or something.”
What makes this film is the final scene. The actors aren’t even facing the camera, which focuses on the ad Sara has just taped to a light pole. The skateboard is a symbol of hope the couple had for their son. They can laugh and joke; it doesn’t hide their grief. They love each other. They are together.
I found this lovely and poignant, as short as this was.
“A Simple Ad” can be watched here.
Edited to add (belatedly…): Full disclosure: the writer of the film is an old friend of mine.
Title: A Simple Ad (2019)
Directed by
Juan Carlos Hernández
Writing Credits
Alex Diaz-Granados
Cast
Adria K. Hernandez…Sara
Juan Carlos Hernández…John
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 
Well that was different
Yeah, a bit different from my usual fare. 🙂
Reblogged this on A Certain Point of View, Too and commented:
This was the first screenplay I wrote that made it from page to screen, and because it is so short, it was…challenging…to work on. It was supposed to be a two-minute film (which would have required a two-page screenplay), but I’m not that good a writer, so the result was a film with a running time of 3:41, which is almost four minutes…
Thank you, Denise, for taking the time to review “A Simple Ad.” It’s not easy to write a screenplay for such a short film, especially if – like me – you don’t have any formal training in film production or screenwriting. As it is, this was supposed to be a two-minute short, but I couldn’t produce anything that brief.
Of course. Happy to do so.