28 December 2016

Duplassity


BLUE JAY (A-minus) - This spare comic drama -- featuring Mark Duplass and Sarah Paulson as former high school flames meeting 20 years later back in their small California hometown -- is pure grown-up storytelling.

Duplass, whom we analyzed in our previous post, puts forth another convincing portrayal of a rudder-less 30-something (Jim) who has trouble keeping his emotions in check. He weeps easily. He is back in his childhood home going through his mother's things after her recent death.

At the grocery store, Jim runs into Amanda, who is back to lend a hand to her pregnant sister. They go for coffee, which leads to an epic all-night hangout. Amanda is married, with her older boy headed off to college.

This was apparently an 80-minute improvisation drawn from an outline by Duplass (overseen by first-time director Alex Lehmann, a veteran camera operator). The only other character in the film is the liquor store clerk, Waynie (a sweet turn by the veteran Clu Gulager, last glimpsed in "Tangerine"). The old guy recognizes the couple (and their penchant for assembling their own custom six-pack based on random geography). He assumes they are still a couple, and they don't disabuse him of the notion.

Paulson, generally a TV actress (most recently in that O.J. miniseries; she does look like Marcia Clark), imbues Amanda with a mix of playfulness, regret and longing. She is an accomplished physical performer. She melds nicely with Duplass as onetime teen lovers now settled into adulthood. They have a visceral rapport.

As the beers get cracked open and the two loosen up, the '90s references fly and the warmth of nostalgia melts the years. They unearth cassette tapes from Jim's closet, some with classic rap and pop songs, another with a recording of the young lovers play-acting the future as empty-nesters. When Jim isn't looking, Amanda finds a sealed letter and stashes it into her pocket, and she buries her face in one of his shirts, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply.

Small secrets spill out from each of them. Neither one feels fulfilled. One of them is clearly more miserably smitten than the other is. It all builds to a fantastic climax, in which the couple's big secret drops like a bomb and Jim finally detonates.

When the sun comes up, they seem both closer and further apart.

BONUS TRACKS
The pair have a cheesy moment dancing to some classic Annie Lennox, the appropriately themed "No More I Love You's":



And Bill Callahan closes things out with a 2009 track, "Jim Cain" (the movie's inspiration?):


 

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