A woman is haunted by visions of a kitchen ladle. Then her memories reach a boiling point.


LADLE is used with permission from Julia Monahan. Learn more at https://imdb.com/title/tt20317942.


Yumi is a young woman going about her life, working, living with her partner and enjoying her hobbies. But the tidy surface of her seemingly ordinary life is disrupted when she starts seeing kitchen ladles everywhere.

Suddenly ordinary objects she holds -- pens, rackets, a bath brush -- turn into ladles in her mind, puzzling and increasingly unnerving her. She soon unravels the meaning behind these strange visions, requiring her to confront the buried layers of memories she's been hiding all along.

Directed and written by Julia Monahan, this short drama is an offbeat, almost surreal take on the serious subject of trauma. Beginning with two people playing tennis in the sunshine, the film has a seemingly polished, sunny sense of visuals, an almost aspirational gleam. But very quickly this glossiness is ruptured by Yumi's intrusive visions, where a tennis racket suddenly morphs into a soup ladle.

At first, these flashes of intrusive images are just a glitch in Yumi's reality, but they begin to escalate. Yumi becomes more distressed by them as they pop up at inopportune times, pulling her out of her present moment and affecting her interactions with people. The overall design of the film emphasizes the increasing disjointedness of Yumi's state of mind, with a dissonant musical score overwhelming the image at times, offbeat editing rhythms jerking the story forward and flashes of light disrupting the natural look and feel of the visuals.

But the film coheres when Yumi finally works through the traumatic event that is the origin of her intrusive thoughts. Actor Emi Ellis has a matter-of-fact demeanor at first that seems to have pushed these events to the side, getting on with the business of life. But she ably conveys the confusion, uncertainty and then creeping fear as her intrusive thoughts intensify, reaching the point where she cannot ignore her past anymore.

Based on the director's experiences, LADLE is unique in that the traumatic event at the heart of Yumi's story did not have a tragic ending. But the moments of uncertainty, doubt and fear are searing enough to imprint a trauma upon Yumi's mind. While it "turned out to be nothing," as Yumi says, the film makes the case that such an experience isn't nothing and that extreme stress and agony can still deeply affect us, even when the outcome isn't tragic. Minimizing and ignoring a traumatic experience, no matter its outcome or ending, actually lets it fester and gain power, interrupting our lives and relationships. As Yumi discovers, silence gives trauma strength -- but talking about it loosens its hold on us, helping us to move forward.