Two friends settle their differences with a duel to the death.


DELOPING is used with permission from Jon Olav Stokke. Learn more at https://jonolavstokke.com.


It's July 1792, and Mary and Emma are two friends who are angry and irritated with one another. They decide to settle their differences in the only way they know how: by dueling to the death.

Dueling is what the men do to solve their conflicts, but Mary and Emma don't know how to duel properly. They know it involves guns and bullets, and counting down while walking off, but that's about it. When their duel doesn't go as planned, they find another novel way to resolve their arguments.

Directed by Jon Olav Stokke and written by Tom Mair, this witty comedy travels back to the past to explore two friends trying to resolve a conflict between themselves. The conflict is petty, but the way they choose to resolve it is life and death. But dueling is the only way they've observed in their society, so the two women set about trying to duel themselves.

Part of the humor comes from the relative pettiness of the conflict -- something about pride being injured by a poor reception to a floral arrangement -- in comparison to the gravity of the duel. And part of it comes from the absurdity of dueling itself, for neither woman knows what they're doing, from the steps to the operation of the guns themselves. (For her part, Emma has a hard time counting backward.)

As both women muddle through the ritual of dueling, their personality differences and the actual conflict emerge as they navigate a series of misunderstandings, grievances and ego irritations. As Mary and Emma, respectively, actors Lola-Rose Maxwell and Eleanor Morton remain understatedly grounded in each character's emotional reality, all while dexterously hitting each comic beat in the excellent dialogue, which makes clear that dueling itself is a ridiculous ritual, undergirded by strange beliefs in divine justice and practiced with ludicrously unreliable weaponry.

Because Mary and Emma are so inexperienced at dueling, they have plenty of time to actually talk, allowing each character the opportunity to state their perspective and have it heard by the other person. As they both vent and then listen, the women bumble their way to a resolution and understanding emotionally, with Mary finally forgiving Emma for her trespass at the very last, rather unfortunate, minute.

Fans of the Coen Brothers' brand of dark comedy will enjoy DELOPING, not just for its dark, absurd humor, but also for its visual flair, tongue-in-cheek storytelling and attention to detail. Like those inspirations, it finds a wry wit in the short-sighted foibles of human beings who allow the small and insignificant to become bigger than themselves -- and a world that engineers convoluted and violent solutions to everyday issues.