Mike is a roaming loner. He’s always moving but gets nowhere. His mother’s house in New Jersey, the pizza place where he works, an awkward party with acquaintances, and the street. One day, his friend Mark leaves his travel promotion work and his Philadelphia apartment to him while he travels to Poland. Even this fails to make changes to Mike’s monotonous life. He is left alone on a dark bus at sunset. Ted Fendt’s Short Stay is a form of moral story. Mike’s words and actions sometimes draw laughter but the movie doesn’t become a comedy. Mike’s aimless wandering is like the protagonists of Hong Sang-soo or Eric Rohmer. People don’t change much even when their environment does. Mike just lives his life. In a digital-filmmaking generation the texture of the images shot on 35mm are almost antique. (JANG Byungwon)