Jessica Goes to New York: A Wonderland Where You Get Lost To Find Yourself

John Carmel’s 16-minute Jessica Goes to New York is a self-reflexive coming of age tale about its titular heroine, a young woman who has a wealth of happy-go-lucky vivacity but suffers from an utter lack of purpose.

Charming is the word that best describes Jessica Peru (Carmel), but you can just call her Jessica Peru. Living the 60s aesthetic from head to toe, handbag to home, Jessica Peru has a zest for life and fashion that calls to mind another young woman who found herself without a purpose: Midge Maisel (Intentional or not, it comes with a character who goes by that first name but without the larger-than-life personality as if that were earmarked specifically for Jessica Peru).

A sprightly character with her bright, candy coloured clothing and grand manners who has you sitting up and paying attention as immediately as she endears herself to you, Jessica Peru is nonetheless stuck and unhappy. Rather than begin resolving it, she uses her resources to distract herself from the problem. But its existence is unmissable once the film contrasts her against the eerily desolate, awfully imposing building when she meets Midge (Abby Asimos). Or in her own poeticism, “If the world is a banquet, then why am I starving to death?” It is a terribly sincere exclamation, so no wonder that Jessica Peru rarely wants to face it head on. But when a vintage vanity set arrives in the mail, and she sets off for New York City to track down the recipient of an unopened letter hiding in its back, Jessica Peru lands smack in the belly of her existential crisis. As for us viewers, so thoroughly entranced are we by her little bubble in the world, it comes as a shock to see that the world is in fact in the 2020s an Enchanted -like adventure follows. New York has everything, Jessica Peru discovers with childlike wonder, except, to her disappointment, the object of her search.

Unlike Jessica Peru’s crisis, however, the film invites you to feast yourselves on its flourishes. Gorgeously lit scenes (the grass so vibrantly green in one shot, you cry to be out on a day like that), retro frane compositions, pop art colour schemes, quad split screens, whimsical fourth wall breaks whose twee charm pleasantly does not try to be the next Fleabag , and whip pans that are only a little like Wes Anderson. To top it all, a soundtrack as buoyant as Jessica Peru’s bouncy wig. Carmel’s performance, the thread binding all this together, is gratifying in its blend of camp and sincerity, so that whatever Jessica Peru’s actual age, she reads effortlessly like the girl child protagonists of fairytales.

Accordingly, when with a pinch of providence, a fairy godmother-like character (Sindi Schorr) appears to lightly tap some sense into her head, what we see is a person’s realisation that they are not alone in the world, and relief that there is much to look forward to in growing up-as long as they find the courage to look inwards.

Watch Jessica Goes to New York Short Film