Adelaide, a short film by Liliana Greenfield-Sanders, requires us to listen intently before we see a thing. Faint birdcalls and a dial tone provide the only soundtrack to a stark black screen before the camera opens on a well-formed mouth issuing the deliberate instructions: “I’m going to need an ambulance at 82 Whipstick Lane, stat…The girl on the second floor has gone into a hypoglycemic coma.” The girl in question is Adelaide—a 22-year-old woman who, after hanging up, gives herself an injection, and promptly passes out in a wheelchair. In her latest film, Liliana Greenfield-Sanders explores the unlikely romance between Adelaide—a girlish preppy whose cheerful pink wardrobe and pert ponytail belie her dark need for rescue—and a kind-faced pharmacist whose reading material, The Caregiver’s Book: Caring for Another, Learning to Care for Yourself, sets Adelaide’s inquisitive eyes aflame with passion.
Adelaide, whose scattering of scars recounts multiple surgeries, is, as Greenfield-Sanders describes her, “a walking ball of need.” Sparked by curiosity about Münchausen Syndrome (wherein the individual feigns or invokes illness to get medical attention), Greenfield-Sanders wondered to what lengths a person with Münchausen’s would go, and further, how they would succeed in love. Greenfield-Sanders’s deft exploration of what happens when, as she puts it, “the walking ball of need meets the walking ball of nurture” pays tribute to the idea that there is a perfect person for each of us. In unwavering close-ups that recall the frightening sensation of new love, she tracks an intimacy that positively hums.
Greenfield-Sanders, who from an early age was drawn to darkly funny films with lovably flawed characters—think Arthur and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—began to document her life and friends’ lives somewhat obsessively in high school, but didn’t see herself as a filmmaker in earnest until her first film, the documentary Ghosts of Grey Gardens, debuted at Tribeca Film festival in 2005. In her subsequent short films, Miriam, Anna, Samantha, and now Adelaide, Greenfield-Sanders has gravitated towards characters that she sees as “relatable,” but who, she says, “are not like somebody’s mother, sister, or daughter. They ride a fine line with the public as far as what’s going on with them psychologically.” After sweeping the short film awards on the independent film circuit with Adelaide, Greenfield-Sanders is now at work on a feature-length production of the same. She admits the challenges of drawing out a narrative from twelve to more than sixty minutes were at first intimidating, but her sensitivity to what makes for a good story has helped her keep focus. She ritually assesses her material, which “tends to skew dark” to make sure it’s achieving the right balance. It’s this sensitivity, as well as her magpie instinct for teasing the dark elements of a character out into the light that make Greenfield-Sanders’s films uniquely appealing, and unsettling.

Related Links:
Liliana Greenfield-Sanders : http://www.lilygs.com/HOME.html