Enough Said and Moments of Realism

I really loved Enough Said.

My friend George and I have been talking recently about reality (or maybe realism?) in films. There is, often, very little of it. My friend and I were speaking about The Way Way Back and The Spectacular Now, mostly unsure about how to talk about how we thought the films got to something that seemed real in some kind of way. These things are difficult to pinpoint. Films tend to be glossy and heavily scripted, and they almost always star an actor or actress that I know at least from reputation. I buy into the movies, usually, and I don't worry too much about whether or not the movie is real. Whether or not it is real doesn't matter to me, actually, because it's a movie and I am watching it for reasons other than realism. Art, incidentally, (and this should be rather obvious) doesn't need to be real to address something powerful or meaningful.

Enough Said's plot reads to me as obviously constructed. It's a romantic comedy, and it works exactly like a standard romantic comedy ought to work. Girl meets boy, girl and boy get along for a while, girl and boy have a break-up, and then either girl and boy get back together at the end or girl finds someone new. Enough Said doesn't mess with this mold at all, but that doesn't stop it from having some amazingly real moments.

This is a romantic comedy about people in their forties. The romance is difficult because dating at that age comes with a lot of baggage. The jokes are funny because they understand something about the banality of getting old, the frustration of dealing with high-school-age kids, the panic of trying to find "the one" again. All of these things approach a kind of realness of situation, or the way life really works.

But the most real thing in this movie is the relationship at its center. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini have the most amazing chemistry. They are both so funny and perfect together, and their first kiss is so amazingly real and honest that my laughter moved from laughing at the situation to the kind of shocked laughter that comes when you can't believe that something is happening. These performances are some of the best of the year. For me, this is great acting: no histrionics; no big fight scenes; no rivers of tears; just simple behavior, the realness of everyday.

When Nicole Holofcener's Friends with Money (which I liked very much) came out, Kenneth Turan called her the Jane Austen of Los Angeles, a title I love and one that fits perfectly (except that I like Holofcener a lot more than I ever liked Jane Austen). But Enough Said works instead like a kind of feminist Angeleno, Woody Allen comedy. In fact, this movie combines the Austenian qualities – the keen observation of the daily lives of middle-class white folks, the difficulties of relationships – with Woody Allen at his best – good jokes, great relationships, broad farce – but focuses on a middle-aged woman from Los Angeles trying to find love again while her daughter leaves for college. This is lovable stuff and very funny.

Toy's House

Honestly, I can't recommend The Kings of Summer enough. I found this first film (directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts) to be a mix between two other movies that I liked very much this year – The Spectacular Now and Mud. I guess that means I am spending a lot of time recommending movies about adolescent boys who struggle with their adolescent lives and try to make sense of the world. The Kings of Summer is about a high-school age kid who is not getting along with his father and so (with his two friends) decides to move into the woods for the summer and live "like men".

In other words, even the kid at this movie's center understand that he is in a coming-of-age narrative. He is trying, actively, to become a grown-up and he knows it. That this bildungsroman theme is self-consciously obvious makes the whole thing even more enjoyable, and The Kings of Summer manages both an ironic and an empathetic perspective (a bit like D.O. Russell's gaze in last year's terribly titled but eminently likable Silver Linings Playbook). We almost never understand the main character Kings to be making the right decision – he makes childish decision after childish decision – but he is a confused, frustrated kid who I couldn't help but love anyway.

Unlike Spectacular Now and Mud, The Kings of Summer is a very funny comedy, with occasionally broad performances by comedians Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Kumail Nanjiani. Kings straddles this sit-comic approach to the suburban scenes with a Malickian approach to all of the scenes in the forest. The woods look gorgeous: the boys look out at the sunset, and play in the lake, and walk in open meadows, and it really feels like they are outside of the absurd world of suburbia that their parents inhabit. But these are two entirely different filmmaking styles, and if they don't actually belong together, their juxtaposition works very well, so that it made me appreciate the boys' forest retreat all the more. The dream of "getting out into nature" makes much more sense when it is clear how absolutely nonsensical life is in suburbia.

Toy's House (this film's former title)

I read a review of the film that called Vogt-Roberts' first feature "slight", and I can understand why someone would critique it this way. If I compare Kings to Mud and Spectacular Now, I have to say that the acting in the other two films is much better in them than in Kings; thematically, the other two films are more interesting, as well; I can even say that I was much more emotionally invested in the other two.

But I liked Kings better. It is a self-aware film that captures something of the absurdity of adolescence and the impossibility of certain modes of existence. Vogt-Roberts casts a withering gaze at masculinity, and, by way of derision, he mocks the idea that traditional masculinity is the proper telos for adolescence. This is is a very funny film, and if it doesn't quite do realism and honesty as well as The Spectacular Now or suspense as well as Mud, The Kings of Summer has an exquisite and hilarious charm all its own.

P.S. I really do feel strange about liking so many movies that center around male adolescence this year. I wonder what's come over me! Feeling nostalgia over my youth, I suppose.

LOTS of Drinking: Part Two

I'm not sure if I can actually be smart about why I liked The Spectacular Now as much as I did, but I am going to try.

The Spectacular Now is a rather simple drama on the face of it. High-school kid Sutter is a fun-loving guy who spends most of his time drinking, partying, and cruising around town in his car instead of focusing on his future or spending time with his family accidentally wakes up on someone else's lawn after an evening of blackout-level drinking. This isn't a drama about alcoholism, so it's not like he has a rude awakening or anything, instead Sutter wakes up to the face of the relatively plain and unassuming Aimee Finecky.

They start hanging out, and since Sutter and his cute/hot girlfriend of two years have recently broken up, Sutter spends more time with Aimee. No one has ever really taken any notice of her, and she falls for Tucker hard. The whole thing is very sweet in a non-cloying, non-clichéd, non-She's-All-That kind of way.

This is a movie about high-school-age young people, so this is a coming-of-age story and a story about taking responsibility, saying no to the other adults in one's life so that one can become one's own adult. Like every film about high school, The Spectacular Now is also filled with awkward, silly decisions made by people who think they know a great deal about the world, but in fact know just as little as the rest of us.

What makes James Ponsoldt's film excellent, though, is the way that it manages to eschew most of the usual clichés of this genre, the way it demonstrates just how much fun Sutter is, and the way the director deftly follows Sutter's alcoholism in a way that allows it to make sense (there were times when I thought I wish he wouldn't drink so much, but... he's so fun when he's drinking. Oh, who cares: let him drink! I want him to keep being fun.)

Mr. Teller

And then there are the performances. Shailene Woodley, who was this close to scoring an Oscar nomination for her role in The Descendants a couple years ago is awkward and lovely: it's a gorgeously natural performance. And Miles Teller, who was the teenager who accidentally killed Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart's kid in Rabbit Hole, is unbelievably good. I found his performance to be absolutely revelatory. He is just incredible: naturally buoyant and fun, he lifts every scene with his impeccable timing, his easy flow from line to line, his beautiful way of giving away his feelings while appearing to attempt to hide everything. We understand Sutter through and through, and even though he makes mistake after mistake, treats his girlfriend like a total asshole, has a serious drinking problem, and can't figure out how to be anything resembling polite to his mother, I loved this boy. Teller is just excellent.

In any case, The Spectacular Now is just a movie about high-schoolers figuring out the world. It's not groundbreaking or life-changing, but I found it deeply moving. And in this time where most filmic ways of looking at characters are ironic or cynical or even smug, The Spectacular Now looks at its troubled central character with humanity and deep affection. I don't see that very often at the movies, and when I do, I am glad of it.