ON PURPLE

Joe Quartararo’s "On Purple" is a sly, simmering take on marital discord, where the sharpest blows are delivered not through shouting matches, but through the quiet sting of bad poetry. It’s about how couples communicate—or rather, fail to—when honesty becomes too difficult and emotional barbs are hidden beneath the veneer of creative expression. Words become weapons, and art becomes a passive-aggressive minefield.

Quartararo builds the tension with quiet precision. There’s an emotional stiffness to the characters' interactions, a sense that both of them are performing the rituals of communication without ever really connecting. The poetry they exchange isn’t about artistic expression—it’s coded warfare. The cutting remarks about daily life and unmet expectations are disguised as creative musings, delivered with a smile but laced with bitterness. The brilliance of the film lies in how effortlessly Quartararo captures this dynamic without over-explaining it. The tension is in the subtext, in the uncomfortable pauses and half-hearted acknowledgments.

Visually, the film leans into restraint. The colour purple becomes a quiet, recurring motif—a symbol of emotional ambiguity and longing. It's the kind of detail that feels loaded but never fully explained, adding to the film’s overall sense of emotional unease. Quartararo’s direction is light-handed but deliberate, letting the weight of unspoken tension settle naturally into the frame.

But what makes "On Purple" land is its humour—dark, dry, and painfully relatable. The characters’ creative efforts are mediocre at best, and that’s part of the point. They’re not poets; they’re emotionally stunted partners trying to claw their way toward understanding without the vulnerability of directness. It’s funny in that awkward, “I’ve definitely been there” kind of way—a reminder that sometimes the biggest arguments are fought over the smallest things.

At its core, "On Purple" is about the quiet unraveling of connection when couples stop talking and start performing. Quartararo taps into that distinctly modern form of emotional detachment, where validation is sought not through conversation but through cleverness. It’s a perceptive, biting study of miscommunication, wrapped in a deceptively simple package.