A woman moves out after a breakup -- and makes an unlikely friend.


LITTLE MOUSE is used with permission from Lena Kaminsky. Learn more at https://littlemousethemovie.com.


Betsy has just broken up with her long-term partner, and she's agreed to move out of the house she's shared with Sarah for many years. But packing up the house is proving to be tough, as is selling it, and she's often immobilized with grief during the process.

During the moving process, Betsy realizes there's a mouse in the house and attempts to catch it. But getting rid of the mouse proves harder than she thought, since it becomes Betsy's only real companion during one of the hardest losses of her life.

Directed and written by Lena Kaminsky, this dramatic short captures one woman's grief and difficulty during a life-altering breakup. Told with a sense of patient observation, gentle naturalism and flourishes of dry humor, the storytelling should prove relatable to anyone who has ever spiraled after the ending of a major relationship and found themselves grieving the life they're leaving behind.

The excellent writing is character-oriented, with a sharp eye and ear for the telling details that both evoke Betsy's life with Sarah before their split and the everyday difficulties that feel even weightier after the breakup. A forgotten delivery of an anniversary present, dealing with the realtor or arranging for an ex and their new partner to pick up their things: these sting with a sharp resonance in a post-breakup reality for Betsy, and the film helps us feel just how overwhelming it all is for her, along with her efforts to be mature, pleasant and civil when she feels anything but.

But while there's a sadness in the storytelling, there's also some levity, as Betsy deals with the discovery of the mouse. The project of getting rid of it somehow spurs her with newfound energy and shakes loose the anger she feels at her ex, which comes out in her dreams. When she finally catches the mouse, though, she can't quite find it in herself to get ride of it, treating it like a companion. It's a testament to actor Eva Kaminsky's delicate, lived-in performance that her downward slide balances the funny and the rawness with a sense of precision and restraint. Her lowest point is gentle in its humor but, above all, handled with empathy, as when Betsy herself realizes how lost she's become -- and how she must soldier forward.

Beautifully observed and compassionate, LITTLE MOUSE is about grief, loss and relationships, and it's also about how the small things of life become imbued with so much more weight and meaning in our everyday lives, often to both humorous and humane effect. Betsy's mouse is her final companion in her soon-to-be-former home. But, like with her former partner, she must learn to let it go, letting the mouse and herself move forward into an unknown future with some degree of peace.