Note: The writer of this review looked at you Together Together on a digital screen from home. Before making the decision to watch it or any other movie in a movie theater, consider the health risks. Here it is an interview on this topic with scientific experts.
There is a gag on compulsive observation Friends in sweet, kind, and slightly subversive indie comedy Together Together. Exactly, this is not a knee-jerk: the film uses a 90s primetime phenomenon that has become an abbreviation for basic pop the taste for culture as an easy way to bridge the generational gap between two people coming together. Intentionally or unintentionally, the joke underscores how much the writer-director Nikole Beckwith is targeting. sitcom territory bordering on the platitudes of more formulaic shows than NBC’s megacit. Maybe, in the end, it’s just an exceptionally simple way to telegraph what Together Together it’s really about: it’s a portrait of strictly platonic love: of strangers who become friends, sometimes while watching Friends.
The main characters are unknown at first. We meet them while they meet. Matt (Ed Helms), an app designer in San Francisco, is 45 years old and single and wants to have a baby. Anna (Patti Harrison), the barista she is interviewing, is 26 years old and single and asks to be her gestational replacement. Anna had a son when she was still in high school and gave him up for adoption. Many of the women who go through this process have raised a child, Matt remarks during his initial conversation. But why should this matter, Anna answers politely, if she knows what it’s like to bring a child she won’t keep. Anyway, as a middle-aged bachelor, Matt also doesn’t quite fit the usual profile of surrogacy. She is alone, while Anna blurs and then consciously returns to herself during their encounter.cringe: an opening scene with a sharp cut that defines the awkward tone and efficiently establishes the dynamic between the two.
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For a while, it’s all social unrest. The first interactions are distinguished, as the nervous Matt is arrogant in his follow-up of Anna’s diet and sex life, the dialogue lands directly The office star comfort zone with small talks and passive aggression. But as these respective loners relax, the film does, too. Together Together it’s almost double the frequency with which only Matt and Anna find themselves alone in the frame, renegotiating the boundaries of an intimate relationship i professional, and that begins to take the form of something else. They develop a warm relationship, fortified by chemistry between two actors who jump at the opportunity to deepen resumes. Harrison, a reliable punchline machine on the small screen (she I think you should leave sketch it is unforgettable), the wedges of vulnerability between the cracks of his dry humor. And Helms sinks heavily into his lathe and firm routine, with a surprising (and moderate) effect. They combine very well, these comics in the moonlight.
The relationship never threatens to become a romance. In fact, Together Together it certainly goes so far as to set aside viewers ’concerns about this possibility, with a debate about age-appropriate quotes and Woody Allen. (If the film’s font choices, cozy coffee backdrops, and the abundance of big-city chatter vaguely recall the disgraced filmmaker’s romantic comedy mark, Anna’s slender critique of her classics works out loud to assure everyone that Beckwith is no fan). When Matt and Anna finally pronounce the “L”Word, it is a moving and almost casual expression of non-loving communion. The film gently ignores expectations in other respects. There’s no exhibition scene that overly explains why Matt hasn’t found someone, why he’s ready to start being a father as a single father. And as it becomes apparent, the danger of separation anxiety that appears in the film has nothing to do with the fact that the baby grows inside Anna; it is the imminent probability that the expiration date will also be an expiration date of the unexpected bond he forged with the father.
That’s what’s ultimately poignant and even a little tricky in this Sundance selection: it’s an ode to the way even impermanent relationships can have deep meaning. Together Together it only falters when it is creating an unwanted continuity between its own seriocomic material and the ten seasons of Matt and Anna’s network filters that come off over three quarters. The margins of the film are filled with a row of funny murderous people: Tig Notaro! Fred Melamed! Nora Dunn! Sufe Bradshaw! —And yet it seems that they all occupy a slightly more mischievous comic universe, periodically tilting the story towards sitcomish incident and improvise jokes. It almost feels like a stack of covers, designed to make us crave moments that simply drop our hero and heroine into a single scene, with no comic backup to distract from its thriving X-millennial compatibility. But perhaps that’s the essence of how life’s deep, truly life-changing friendships make us feel: when you’re with the one you love platonically, the rest of the world is on the way.