★★★☆☆
THE low-key but nevertheless assured and charming feature debut from Sophie Brooks follows Diana (Zosia Mamet), a 20-something wannabe writer who moves to New York City after a break-up with her boyfriend Ben (Matthew Shear).
After some time struggling to find a place to live, she eventually moves in to an apartment building only to discover that her ex actually lives downstairs. Bloody typical, eh? As Diana tries to build a new life, she finds herself looking back over her past as she and Ben flirt with the idea of getting back together or truly moving on separately once and for all.
This kind of story is nothing we haven’t seen before, going over familiar ground surrounding millennial disillusionment, the feeling of not really knowing what you’re doing at an age when society increasingly expects it and the idea that relationship heartbreak at a young age feels like the end of the world.
But Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha and Lee Toland Krieger’s Celeste & Jesse Forever explored those subjects in a far more emotionally piercing and cinematically innovative way.
That being said, there’s far more wit in Brooks’s script than you might expect to find in a quirky indie debut. It contains some effectively snappy dialogue that sits just the right side of snarky and droll without tripping over itself into smug and annoying. The film hits on a self-aware note that it maintains even as it ultimately follows a certain ordinary narrative path.
There’s a sense of sincerity to the performances, too. Both lead actors have pedigree in this sort of indie relationship study – Mamet in TV’s Girls, Shear in Mistress America and The Meyerowitz Stories to name but a few – so there’s a certain kind of ease watching them fit their respective characters like a glove.
Veteran actress Deirdre O’Connell also makes an impact as Diana’s blunt landlord Amy, whose death of her long-time husband makes Diana ponder the prospect of committing to Ben for her whole life.
The performances keep it anchored as it frequently wanders back in time via flashbacks that seek to fill in the blanks of Diana and Ben’s relationship. Ironically that back-and-forth approach, despite Brooks commendably trying to make it all tie together at the end, tends to take away from the thrust of the narrative rather than adding much insight.
A more structurally linear approach would definitely have helped what is ultimately a lightweight, overly familiar film but one told with enough heart and a knowing glint in its optimistic eye to make it worth the journey.
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