Aroma: An Everyday Cafe Comedy-Drama

Oliver Ward’s Aroma is a 10-minute short set in a modern North London cafe but has the flavour of post-war European cinema (with the barest hint of Fleabag). A man—a comically exacting one where his order is concerned—waits for his date to arrive, a young couple plays scrabble while discussing sexual possibilities, and a tired waitress works a second shift through it all.

The three storylines forego grand narratives in favour of casual co-existence to not only make it fit within the runtime but have it be fun, too. Elliptical jump cuts (and a neat stretch of silence) ensure that the awareness of time, whether the narrative is coasting along like a skipping stone, or floundering like that same stone at the end of its trip, never leaves the viewer.

All unnamed, the characters, interact with each other with varying degrees of willingness and discomfort, but the old man (Andrew Melvyn Theobald), waiting for his no-show date, is the zen centre of it. Moved by nothing (other than getting his order just right), and yet affecting everyone around him, he is the orienting point upon which the film’s themes and the rest of the characters are introduced. The performances are right on the money; Yinka Olorunnife as the waitress and Danielle Quinn Taylor as the young woman are memorably attached to the film’s use of jump cuts and stillness. Sebastian White brings a precisely tuned foil to Theobald’s old man, playing the young man who squeaks and stumbles his way through an unexpected conversation with his girlfriend.

The four characters are illustrative. Emotionally underwhelming work, awkward relationships, and people’s curiosities, all within the ambit of an urbanity harking back to the last century, the film is simultaneously contemporary and nostalgic—especially when sweetened with the old man’s romanticism. The day unfolds and dies outside. Inside, the characters carry on, with nowhere else to be, and each other’s interests to occupy.