With excellent production values for a short, A WOMAN SCORNED is a disturbing insight into the mind of a bitter woman lying in bed at might, her advances violently repulsed by her snoring lover. Flooded in gorgeous neon blues and reds, she tosses and turns and the film follows, in an elegant patchwork of past, present and murderous fantasy, the fragmentation of her mind figured in the changes of visual register, from glaring colour to grainy monochrome; from sexual ecstasy to empty loneliness; from talk to silence; dream to reality.
These last two become increasingly blurred, as she thinks of different ways of dispatching her lover (all, significantly, with a sexual twist), which are shown in gruesome detail, a bit like an uncomic UNFAITHFULLY YOURS. Snippets of the past involving a friend of hers lead to assumptions (i.e. adultery) that aren't completely explained (is she just imagining it?), but when she looks in the mirror next morning, the friend's strangled corpse reflects back. Unlike the Sturges film, dream definitely does not turn to farce, and if this is chilling, than there are fewer films as concise as this in describing the alienation, mistrust and festering anger and hurt that comprise most relationships.
