The American Richard Shepard is a director specializing in TV series who made his debut in 2018 with this feature film which won some festivals, starring Allison WIlliams who many will remember from Peele's "Get Out" and Johnstone's "M3gan", by Logan Browning and Steven Weber.

The film tells the story of Charlotte (Williams), a cellist who as a teenager is considered a rising star with a future ahead of her radiant; Unfortunately, the girl's mother becomes seriously ill and Charlotte has no choice but to abandon the highly coveted private conservatory where she was studying and return home to assist her mother in the last years of her life: her career as a cellist is completely over.

After the death of her mother Charlotte doesn't know what to do (all her life she has only played and studied music) and so she goes to Shanghai to try to reconnect with the owner of the conservatory where she was signed up to look for some connections in playing in some orchestra or, in any case, working in the musical field.

Obviously the new Charlotte is no longer the same as the past, years of training and technical improvement are missing , therefore she has no ambition other than to find a job to move forward.

After some time, she is invited by the owner of the conservatory (Weber) on the occasion of a competition reserved for adolescent females to enter the conservatory in the role of cellist.

It doesn't take long for Weber to introduce Charlotte to the girl who, in fact, has taken her place as a rising star and leader diamond of the conservatory: Lizzie (Browning), a beautiful girl who seems to have superior technical skills to the Charlotte of the past.

Weber decides that the two of them will be the judges who will decide the winner of the admission test and from that moment a homosexual passion is sparked between the two which sets off the film...

The focus of the film, however, is not Music as one might think, it is not the relationship between the two cellists what is at the center of the story is not the search for technical perfection nor the ability to suffer and sacrifice to reach a goal; the horror drift, in the end, will explain everything and will be able to justify, with a certain suspension of disbelief, the entire plot.

Shepard's work is however equipped with decent photography and technically it is well beyond sufficiency and even the same reassembly, twice, manages to have a decidedly successful impact (especially the first time...).

Unfortunately, however, there are some defects that are difficult to pretend not to see: first of all, the lesbian scene could very well have been cut as it has absolutely no influence on the plot but, above all, useless for the purposes of the dynamics between the two protagonists as, immediately, the homosexual dynamic disappears immediately and throughout the film the two behave like two friends and not like two lovers; the final scene could very well have been eliminated, it's not very credible and almost makes you laugh...

It's a discreet work with which you can spend a different evening than usual.