Relationships have always struck me as a kind of choreography built out of gestures and repetitions. I was drawn to Tenderness because this couple lives inside that pattern. They aren’t trying to fix their relationship so much as replay it, their bickering reenactment producing its own kind of broken intimacy.
The theatre space allows the characters to explore their distorted memories: a waitress becoming a child, a teen idol watching from the audience. The exchanges play almost like a vaudeville routine, while the camera registers what sits beneath the exchange — two people performing and searching at the same time.