Clear Win
A young man and a young woman battle over the last bottle of vodka.
Pride is at stake on both sides, but is there a greater win to be had?
Not all romantic stories about opposites attracting can be ‘When Harry Met Sally’ or ‘Pretty Woman’. You don’t always have New York in the fall as a wonderful backdrop or get a knight in shining armor to sweep you off the streets of LA into a new life of lavish gifts and polo matches.
Occasionally, you might just happen to meet someone while you’re off running a mundane errand, such as buying some booze. Even then, your initial chitchat may not be laced with crackling innuendo. Instead, it might be riddled with acerbic aspersions.
But then the unexpected happens; you stumble upon a commonality, a shared belief, an empathetic moment… and everything changes. Love is in the air and the erstwhile adversaries become a future twosome.
Such is the way with Fiona Faith Ross’ lighthearted and romantic tale; ‘Clear Win’. In this instance a ‘her’ and a ‘him’ find themselves at odds in a convenience store as they aggressively fight for control over the store’s last bottle of cheap vodka.
HER
I saw it first.
HIM
Bollocks.
HER
Don’t you swear at me. I’ll have you arrested.
HIM
For not giving you your own way?
Both dig in their heels. Neither willing to give an inch to the other in an epic battle of ‘who gets to go home and get shitfaced on cheap-ass vodka’.
They each make a rather lame attempt to justify why one of them deserves the bottle over the other. Failing this, ‘Her’ uses her feminine charms to subtly disarm ‘Him’ to the extent he loosens his grip on the bottle. Using the moment to Her advantage, the woman successfully snatches the bottle away from ‘Him’.
But he won’t go that easily into the night. The young man clamps his hand around the bottle again. At this point, the young woman decides she has had enough of the games.
HER
Have it then, jerk.
Instead of wallowing in his victory, ‘Him’ stumbles over ‘Her’s’ shopping basket and lands on the floor with a thud. But not before smashing the prized bottle of vodka. Which inevitably leads to additional bickering over who should now cover the cost of the shattered bottle.
However, as they make their way to the check out, their squabbling segues into a fleeting détente as the truth about why they are at the store, and what they had intended to use the vodka for emerges… eliciting a brief moment of empathy and mutual curiosity between the young ‘Him’ and ‘Her’.
Love often seems to find us in the strangest of places. And not every first exchange will inspire an enchanting Shakespearean sonnet. Sometimes the first words we say to someone is the anthesis of how we’ll eventually feel about them.
Which is why this delightful short screenplay by Fiona Faith Ross is such a playful morsel of flirtatious whimsy. An excellent opportunity for a new filmmaker looking for a simple, yet captivating project in which to showcase their budding creative dexterity.
