Stuffed

Love and desire can make us do the strangest things. Stuffed gleefully asks just how far we’re willing to go.

In an inventive feature debut, director and co-writer Theo Rhys simultaneously serves up a dark comedy, an offbeat romance, and a twisted musical that dances between the macabre and the heartfelt. At its centre are Araminta, an isolated mortician-cum-taxidermist with a dream, and Bernie, a lonely factory worker whose extraordinary request draws these two outsiders together. 

Rhys — here adapting his acclaimed 2021 short film of the same name — embraces the ghoulish with infectious enthusiasm, creating a heightened cinematic world where songs emerge from moments of aching vulnerability, the grotesque becomes unexpectedly beautiful, and love flourishes in the unlikeliest of places.

Jodie Comer (TIFF ’23’s The End We Start From) is sensational as the fiercely independent Araminta. She is matched beat for beat by Harry Melling (TIFF ’23’s Shoshana), whose fearless performance transforms Bernie into one of the year’s most endearing screen oddballs. Under Rhys’ confident direction, the duo give the film its beating heart, grounding even its wildest flights of imagination in genuine longing, humour, and tenderness as the story spirals toward an unforgettable conclusion. Co-writer and composer Joss Holden-Rea's wonderfully idiosyncratic songs weave seamlessly into the narrative, creating a musical language as bold and adventurous as the film itself.

Bursting with gothic invention, Stuffed seems destined for cult status, introducing audiences to both a filmmaker with an original vision and to an offbeat love story they’ll never forget… and maybe want to preserve forever.

JASON RYLE

Content advisory: themes of suicide and animal death