My Nights Glow Yellow (2023)

A friend for hire, K (Michelle Mao), struggles with her own lack of friends. As she goes from person to person, pretending to be their friend, helping them with groceries, and eating Japanese food, she finds that she’s lacking any genuine relationships. My Nights Glow Yellow is an intimate look at friendship and isolation as it appears to K.

It’s the emotion that guides My Nights Glow Yellow. While there are certainly a series of moving parts throughout the course of the film, the emotion is what got to me and allowed the film to resonate with me from beginning to end. What’s most impressive about My Nights Glow Yellow is the fact that the scenarios depicted on screen are so unique (and most people have likely never experienced something like this before), and yet Writer-Director Hannah Bang allows the film to resonate with everyone. Emotion flows freely through My Nights Glow Yellow, and I’m not sure that there is even a single second that doesn’t spew emotion.

The color yellow can signify a number of different things ranging from joy and happiness to betrayal and jealousy, and Bang does a spectacular job of covering the spectrum of what this color can mean. The color is in the title: My Nights Glow Yellow, and I believe that viewers are anticipating that the color yellow might play a significant role in the film–which it most certainly does.

The majority of the film consists of darker tones that represent sadness and struggle, and viewers are definitely able to understand Bang’s purpose in this regard. However, what ultimately catches the eyes of viewers is the fact that most of the film possesses some sort of yellow. Whether the hue of the film has been altered, or something on the screen is blatantly yellow, the color constantly makes its way to the screen. My Nights Glow Yellow captures viewers’ attention, and it holds on tight to them. The either subtle or outright use of the color yellow plays with the title, the tone of the film, and the underlying messages that exist throughout.

In a short film that lasts only about twenty minutes, My Nights Glow Yellow does a spectacular job of quickly getting to the point without being overly aggressive. Bang quickly and effectively nestles her way into the hearts of viewers by constructing a series of situations in which viewers everywhere can appreciate and access; and her use of the color yellow throughout the course of My Nights Glow Yellow adds to the film’s depth and its meaning. This short film is brilliant, hitting all the right notes at just the right times.

Written & Directed by Hannah Bang.

Starring Michelle Mao, Matt McGorry, Yvette Lu, Hideotshi Imura, Elise Arndt, etc.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/10