Breaking: First Mint Clip Shows Explosive Chemistry Between Leads

The camera lingers on a close-up of two people who clearly shouldn’t be in the same room together—let alone the same frame. Yet here they are, trading barbs so sharp you could slice glass with them, and somehow making it look like foreplay. That’s the first thirty seconds of the newly-released clip from Mint, A24’s upcoming prestige drama that has quietly leap-frogged every other awards-season hopeful to become the film people will be breathlessly dissecting at coffee machines and in group chats. One moment Eliza Scanlen’s character, a bankrupt heiress turned reluctant hotel inspector, is brushing cigarette ash off a lobby sofa; the next, Mikey Madison’s rogue sommelier is uncorking a $3,000 bottle of ’82 Bordeaux like she’s cracking open a Diet Coke. The air between them crackles—part animosity, part gravitational pull—and suddenly the phrase “explosive chemistry” feels laughably inadequate.

A First Look That Demands to Be Rewatched

Director Bethany López doesn’t waste a single second of the two-minute teaser. Instead of spoon-feeding exposition, she drops us mid-scene into the once-grand lobby of the fictional Hotel Marquez, now a faded dowager of a building with chipped terrazzo floors and velvet drapes that smell of mothballs and secrets. The camera glides past bellboys who look like they know better than to make eye contact, then lands on Scanlen’s ramrod posture as she flicks open a leather notebook. “Room twelve’s minibar is missing two Toblerones,” she mutters. Madison, leaning against the reception desk in a wine-stained blazer, fires back: “Maybe they needed the calories to survive your inspection.” The line lands like a slap, but the half-smirk she can’t quite hide gives the game away: she’s enjoying this dance.

What makes the moment sing is how much history is implied without a scrap of dialogue to confirm it. You sense exes, or maybe almost-exes, or maybe two people who recognized a worthy adversary across a crowded auction and decided misery was better company than loneliness. The clip ends on a breath held too long: Madison tilts the bottle, Scanlen catches the first drop of wine on the tip of her finger, and for an instant the world shrinks to that single bead of liquid. Smash-cut to black. No title card, no release date—just the sound of a cork being re-inserted, as though the film itself is telling us to wait, to wonder, to gossip.

From Indie Darlings to Awards-Season Sparks

Industry watchers have been tracking Mint since A24 quietly snapped up the spec script in a seven-figure deal last winter. The logline—two women battle for control of a crumbling luxury hotel only to discover the real renovation needs to happen within themselves—reads like prestige Mad Libs. But the pedigree is undeniable: López, fresh off her Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Desert Bloom, wrote the role of meticulous inspector Vera Ashworth for Scanlen after working with her on a short. Madison, meanwhile, reportedly lobbided for the part of chaotic sommelier Carmen Ruez by sending the director a video of herself sabering Champagne bottles in a parking lot at dawn, a cigarette dangling from her lips like a dare.

On paper the duo shouldn’t mesh. Scanlen’s résumé is all quiet devastation—Babyteeth, Sharp Objects—while Madison exploded into our collective consciousness via Scream and Better Things with feral charisma. Yet in this first footage their rhythms lock like puzzle pieces. Watch the way Scanlen’s left eyebrow arches a millisecond after Madison’s voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper; notice how Madison’s fingers tighten imperceptibly around the bottle neck when Scanlen steps closer. It’s the kind of micro-ballet veteran directors spend whole shoots choreographing, and these two arrive already fluent.

Behind the scenes, that synchronicity was hard-won. According to crew members who asked not to be named, López insisted on a two-week rehearsal period in an abandoned YMCA in Tucson, no cell phones allowed. The actors reportedly lived in the building’s former squash courts, cooking communal meals on a hot plate and running lines until the words lost all meaning. “Bethany wanted them to develop the muscle memory of people who have spent years orbiting each other,” one source said. “By the time we started shooting, they could anticipate inhalations.” That dedication shows up onscreen as a kind of magnetic field: even when they’re not looking at each other, the space between vibrates.

What the Buzz Means for Awards Season

Let’s not pretend Oscar campaigns begin with screenings anymore; they begin with moments like this—when a studio drops a sliver of footage and social media does the rest. Within ninety minutes of A24 posting the clip, Twitter thirst edits had already overlaid the wine-droplet shot with Phoebe Bridgers’ “Sidelines.” TikTokers stitched themselves into the scene, offering comedic retorts about missing Toblerones. Film critics—professionally jaded souls who like to claim they’re immune to hype—quoted dialogue lines alongside flame emojis. The consensus: if the rest of the movie sustains this voltage, we’re looking at dual acting nominations, screenplay nods, and below-the-line recognition for the production designer who found a way to make neglect look glamorous.

History tells us chemistry this combustible can lift an entire film into the cultural stratosphere. Think Cate and Rooney in Carol, Daniel and Barry in Phantom Thread, Al Pacino and a mountain of cocaine in Scarface. What those performances share is the sense that the actors aren’t just playing characters—they’re playing the electricity arcing between them. Scanlen and Madison appear to have cracked that code early, and López’s decision to shoot their sparring on 35 mm stock only amplifies the texture; every grain feels like dust motes catching late-afternoon light in a hotel that used to matter.

The Alchemy of Opposites

What makes this pairing electric isn’t just the wordplay—it’s how completely these actresses embody opposing philosophies of survival. Scanlen’s inspector moves through the world like a surgeon’s scalpel, precise and cold, cataloguing every flaw with the fervor of someone who’s learned that control is the only currency left when your last name stops opening doors. Madison’s sommelier, by contrast, is pure improvisation, a woman who treats a 40-year-old bottle of wine like tap water because she’s discovered that the rules were never written for people like her anyway.

The clip’s genius lies in what happens between their lines. Watch Scanlen’s fingers tighten almost imperceptibly around her pen when Madison mentions “the calories”—a flash of genuine hurt before the armor clicks back into place. Or catch how Madison’s dismissive laugh hitches just slightly when Scanlen fires back about “accounting for every asset,” a momentary crack that suggests she’s not as insulated from judgment as she pretends. These aren’t just actors hitting marks; they’re conducting an orchestra of micro-expressions that most viewers won’t even consciously register but will feel in their bones.

The hotel itself becomes a third character in their pas de deux. Every creaking floorboard and water-stained ceiling tile serves as witness to this ritualized combat. When Madison swirls that Bordeaux, the liquid catches the light like liquid rubies, and for just a moment, the entire frame seems to hold its breath—two women who’ve learned that in a world designed to diminish them, the most radical act might be refusing to play the roles they’ve been assigned.

Why This Changes Everything

Let’s be honest: we’ve grown accustomed to prestige dramas that mistake misery for meaning, that confuse emotional austerity with artistic merit. Mint appears to be operating from a different playbook entirely. The clip pulses with a kinetic energy that’s been missing from recent awards bait, recalling the crackling tension of Phantom Thread or Michael Clayton—films that understood intelligence can be the most seductive quality two people can share.

This isn’t just about representation, though the sight of two young women engaging in this level of psychological warfare feels revolutionary in a landscape that typically relegates female conflict to catfights or maternal melodrama. It’s about complexity—the recognition that women’s ambitions can be as ruthless, as intellectually rigorous, as morally ambiguous as any male antihero’s. When Scanlen’s inspector delivers her final line—”I’ll be recommending immediate foreclosure”—it’s not a threat but a promise, delivered with the kind of satisfaction usually reserved for Bond villains revealing their master plans.

The Conversation That Follows You Home

Long after the clip ends, what lingers is the question neither woman asks but both are clearly pondering: what happens when the only person who can truly see you is the one standing in your way? Their chemistry isn’t romantic in any conventional sense—it’s the recognition of a worthy opponent, the relief of finally encountering someone whose mind works at your frequency, even if they’re tuning it to a different station.

This is the kind of scene that sends you scrambling to Wikipedia at 2 AM, desperate to understand the actual protocols of hotel inspectors to gauge how much artistic license López is taking. But research only gets you so far. What the clip promises—and what makes it feel essential—is a film that trusts its audience to read between the lines, to understand that the most explosive chemistry often looks nothing like attraction and everything like recognition.

The best scenes don’t just advance plot; they create weather systems, altering the atmospheric pressure of everything that follows. In just two minutes, Mint has managed to make the simple act of opening a wine bottle feel like a declaration of war, a peace offering, and a seduction all at once. If this is what López and her leads can accomplish in a teaser, the full film might just leave us all gasping for air.