Marie is a middle-aged bit part Hollywood actress who has still not had her big breakthrough part. She has been successful enough to be able to live in a Malibu Beach apartment, albeit a small rented one. She’s a bit of a hippie and leads a healthy lifestyle with her daily routines of paddle-boarding and regularly drinking the very un-appetising looking vegetable smoothies she makes herself.What little there is in the way of plot in this movie is furnished with the arrival of Marie’s niece Faye who is an aspiring actress and who is visiting her Aunt for a vacation and some mentoring. Having the younger woman around gives Marie to verbalise on where she went wrong with her life choices so that Faye doesn’t repeat them. And she in turn she invites her Aunt to hang out with her own party-going friends, one of whom ends up taking Marie to bed.
Marie is in fact smart enough to recognize all the signs of her own fast approaching mid-life crisis, but she is still unable to stopping the inevitability of it happening.
Co-written by actress Jane Adams who also played Marie which to all intents and purpose was surely just playing herself. Co-written and directed by Joe Swanberg …. the most intriguing and prolific of contemporary filmmakers and actors …. who with his hand held camera was the sole crew member on location. This is ultra-micro budget filmmaking at its best.
Whether Jane Adams was actually acting a part or not, this sad reflective woman on screen was sufficiently engaging that you became invested in the outcome. Although there was little point to that, as this was not so much a narrative in the usual sense, but more an essay of where one woman found herself in the middle of a life which has disappointed her so far.
Swanberg made this movie in 2012 before his biggest ‘almost mainstream’ movie ‘Drinking Buddies’ finally started attracting a much wider audience for his work at last. This one is not in the same league but is i fact somewhere between ‘Drinking Buddies’ and his early mumblecore works, but much more accessible than the latter … and more enjoyable too. He is definitely a filmmaker who I will always look out with great interest to see what he delivers next.
Compulsory viewing for any actresses about to hit 45 ….!
