Movie Spotlight: Princess Cut

Lauren LaVera plays Teresa in Princess Cut, a local woman from the Hamptons who ends up in a laundromat overnight with someone from an entirely different world. Elaine Del Valle cast her years before LaVera became known as the scream queen of the Terrifier franchise. “She reminded me of women I knew growing up between Brooklyn and Long Island,” Del Valle says, “strong, funny, resilient, and a little unpredictable.” That instinct for casting turned out to be right.

Del Valle directed, produced, co-wrote, and served as casting director on Princess Cut, a 21-minute short that spent years on HBO and keeps finding new audiences. It began as a stage play called Bitch Brow by Demetra Kareman, which Del Valle caught at a fringe festival and immediately knew she had to adapt. “I fell in love with the characters, the themes, the subtle humor, and especially the surprise ending,” she says.

Two Women, One Night

Teresa is a local. Elodie (Sydney Gayle Amanuel) is wealthy, wearing a princess-cut engagement ring and carrying all the expectations that come with it. They end up in the same all-night laundromat because there’s nowhere else to be. Del Valle set the film in the Hamptons deliberately. Most people picture the Hamptons as summer wealth and waterfront luxury, but locals know a different version. After Labor Day, the seasonal residents leave overnight. The people who stay are the workers, the service providers, the year-round families. Locals have a name for the Tuesday after Labor Day when the money disappears: Tumbleweed Tuesday. That contrast is the atmosphere the film lives in.

The Origin

The stage play relied heavily on dialogue, which worked in the theater. For the film, Del Valle and Kareman stripped the script down and let visuals carry more of the weight. What they kept was the wit and the emotional truth underneath. Kareman co-wrote the screenplay. Del Valle was drawn to the collision of haves and have-nots, two women who assume they have nothing in common discovering that assumption was built on nothing. “Beneath our circumstances, we are all human,” Del Valle says.

Lauren LaVera Before Terrifier

Del Valle is a CSA casting director by profession. “I need to believe a character from the moment an actor walks into the room,” she says. LaVera arrived prepared, fearless, and completely committed. Sydney Gayle Amanuel brought something different: restraint, intelligence, quiet vulnerability. Her transformation into Elodie was complete enough that Del Valle says she believed every moment. “Together, they created a chemistry that elevated every scene.” The film only works if the audience believes both the conflict and the connection between these two women. It does.

Watch It Twice

Del Valle is upfront about the ending. Once you know it, the breadcrumbs are everywhere. Dialogue that seemed incidental, visual choices that registered as style, small details that look like nothing on a first viewing. She designed the film to keep audiences one step ahead of the story, then pull the floor out. “Many people become convinced something terrible is going to happen to Jimmy,” she says, “only to discover they’ve been making assumptions the entire time.”

What to Know Before You Press Play

Del Valle keeps it simple: “Let the story unfold. And then watch it again.” Princess Cut earned festival recognition and lived on HBO for years, rare for a short film. It’s 21 minutes and asks more questions than films ten times that length. Del Valle has spent her career making work about people who are overlooked or misjudged. This is the one that keeps coming back around.

Mystery

---

Streaming now on Relay.