“Now in this post-#MeToo era when women look back at their past, they can say ‘this is a gray area, and it’s okay.’ We need to process things in more than just black and white.”

Amanda Jane Stern

In the upcoming film “Perfectly Good Moment”, a romantic reunion unfurls into a psychological thriller after seemingly innocent Ruby returns to her much older ex-fiancé, David. Soon after the initial bliss wears off, David reverts to his old ways, quick to snap at her for the smallest perceived slight. After walking on eggshells around David for the last 8 years, Ruby has had enough. While David thinks his perfect life is back on track, Ruby has other plans. 

The film stars Stephen Carlile, best known for his years-long portrayal of the villainous Scar in The Lion King on Broadway and Amanda Jane Stern (1 Angry Black Man, Lifetime’s Amish Witches) who also wrote the film. 

“Perfectly Good Moment” marks the narrative feature debut for director Lauren Greenhall, a 2021 resident at the Jewish Film Institute for her documentary “Zelda”, a film proud to be sponsored by the New York Foundation of the Arts. 

Greenhall wants “Perfectly Good Moment” to give women a way to process a common relationship dynamic, where a woman begins to modify her behavior to appease a sensitive man. Over time this need to keep the peace extends to changing her plans, friends, and effectively losing herself in the process. The film also asks an important question: “what happens when the things that make your relationship passionate and exciting are the same things that make it unbalanced and toxic?” 

Stern wrote the script for this genre-bending revenge thriller from a story she co-wrote with producer Julian Seltzer (HBO’s “DMX: Don’t Try to Understand”, Discovery’s “Rebuilding Hope: The Children of 911” and the upcoming “House of Hammer” for Discovery+). Stern and Seltzer previously collaborated on the NPR-featured documentary play “Coerced”, which followed the true story of a teenage girl, who was coerced into confessing to murder. 

One of the most critical aspects of the film is how sex and intimacy are interwoven. Intimacy coordinator Acacia DëQueer who has coordinated films such as “Kissing Kerouac”, “The Robosexual”, and “As The Winter Turns To Fall” (winner Best Acting Duo and Best LGBTQ Film at the 2021 Independent Short Awards) understood how the intimacy scenes were an integral part of how the two characters communicated. DëQueer said, “The intentionality behind every choice in the story –from the words the characters say, to the extensive scenes of eroticism, to the framing of the shots themselves– was exquisitely planned from the beginning.” 

From pre- through post-production, the team built a safe and thoughtful environment for the two-person cast and crew members of all levels. They navigated topics of abuse, violence, and intimacy from an unequivocally female gaze while respecting the boundaries of all involved in order to produce a film that is honest, sexy and suspenseful. 

Principal photography for “Perfectly Good Moment” was completed on location in New York City last summer. 

“Perfectly Good Moment” is produced by Phaedra To Black, LLC.