2 best friends are sent 30 years into future via a magical mailbox. | Incoming Mail

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Incoming Mail is used with permission from Ellery Marshall. Learn more at https://instagram.com/ellery_marshall.

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It’s 1985 and the summer before senior year for best friends Clementine and Ava. Clementine is an aspiring Hollywood star and Ava is a garage rocker. They love to goof off, but Clementine has something most rising high school seniors don’t: she can exchange letters with her future self via a magical mailbox. With these letters, she gets advice and affirmation about what she’s going on in her life.

But one day, Clementine stops getting letters back. Panicking, she accidentally zaps her and Ava through the mailbox all the way to 2015. The future is strange, with its robotic vacuums and mysterious “clap-on” lights. But Clementine also discovers that her future isn’t as glamorous as she hoped, and meeting Future Clementine is a huge disappointment. So it’s up to Future Clementine to teach her teenage self some key lessons — or else risk missing out on the most important lessons of all.

Directedby Ellery Marshall and written by Emily Kim, this spirited short dramedy begins with the almost hyper brio and optimism of teenagers on the brink of adulthood, with all its hopefulness, aspiration and big dreams. Quick-witted and fast-paced, the dialogue bubbles and crackles, capturing both the excitable obsessiveness of Clementine and the jagged energy of her best friend Ava, and the storytelling lays out the central fantastical premise of a magical mailbox. This mailbox enables Clementine’s future self to communicate with her teenage self, guiding and encouraging her through a series of snail mail letters.

That rapport between her present-day teen self and her future adult gives Clementine an outsized confidence that all her dreams will come true. And that confidence sometimes veers into arrogance, as she begins to treat Ava differently. But when the letters stop, Clementine panics and gets sucked into the magical mailbox into the future, along with Ava. The film catches its breath and slows down at this point, allowing both the audience and Clementine to settle down, exploring this strange version of the future. And it also allows Clementine’s key emotional crisis to resonate: she discovers her future self is still living in the same house that she grew up in, and instead of being a big Hollywood star, she’s “just” a drama teacher.

Angry and disappointed, teenage Clementine confronts her grown-up self, trying to understand how she could fall short of her dreams and why middle-aged Clementine is such a disappointment. As young Clementine, actor Isabel Langan captures Clementine’s energy and extraverted confidence, both with its joy and its thornier side. But when she confronts her older self, played with measured understanding by actor Lisa Renee, the film gains its true emotional resonance, with her seasoned grown-up self helping to reconcile her teen counterpart to her future — and helping her gain some maturity and perspective in the process.

Beyond its infectious sense of fun and its playfulness, the great strength of “Incoming Mail” is that it both understands the power and persuasion of teenage dreams and aspirations and the more nuanced compromises that adulthood often requires. And it also has the wisdom to understand that, as glittering as those early aspirations are, they are often founded on notions of success that are shallow and flat. Instead, the grown-up Clementine has compassion for the youthful version of herself, and beyond helping her remedy a mistake that she will regret, she must help her see that fulfillment can be more ordinary and attainable — and that’s what makes it beautiful.

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2 best friends are sent 30 years into future via a magical mailbox. | Incoming Mail
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