Millie’s Care Free Day: Painstaking Quest for Things Better than Apathy and Exhaustion

Michael Licisyn’s 9-minute Millie’s Care Free Day is the film equivalent of a severed limb (no horror intended). Surely there was more to this story, but the crux of the original disaster is contained within the consequences themselves. And so, we watch a film that kicks off with a super summarised montage before being swept up into euphoria only to then come crashing down in bleak despair. Viewers may be in danger of whiplash. 

The most remarkable aspect of the film is its focus and reliance on the face of its title character played by Kathryn Miller. Miller, traversing the length from apathy, hope, to anguish, is a compelling face and the only constant in the opening montage sequence. It is an account of her daily life under the regime of depression and insomnia and has our attention right away with the suspense it creates and pays off, involving Millie, her bedside clock, and a phone call that is as disruptive as it is technically neat.  

A separate, small disruption on the cusp of yet another crawling day sets Millie off on a day that she is determined to experience differently. And she succeeds, almost, before it is cut much shorter than Ferris Bueller’s. This time, the disruption comes in the corporeal form of Leah (Rachel Keefe), the thumbnail on Millie’s phone every morning as she hits reject. It leads to a scene that is equal parts unexpected and unsettling, not the least because Leah is wearing the same shirt as Millie. 

Like Licisyn who has donned multiple hats for this film, Miller has also sung the reprise of a peppy original song, “This Time”. It comes up just as the dreaded confrontation comes to its biting end that leaves one wondering which between a dead best friend and a bad best friend is worse. 

Millie’s Care Free Day shrugs off the question in favour of searching for better tomorrows. There must be a way out of this clockwork hellscape, after all. 

Watch Millie’s Care Free Day Short Film