On paper Margaret and Nate’s friendship seems odd verging on highly unlikely. She is a 52-year-old unmarried woman with an odd sense of style who cannot recall her last relationship and works in a Coffee Shop for minimum wage whilst she yearns to follow her dream of being a Stand Up Comic. He is a 19-year Film School Student, gay although he’s never been kissed, let alone been on a date. They live next door to each other in a Chicago apartment building and are the very best of friends who hang out together every spare moment of their time.Just as it looks like Margaret may have found her stride and actually be funny enough to get a professional gig in a comedy club, Nate meets his first boyfriend James who he allows to come between him and Margaret. James is cute but shallow and when he rushes Nate into a romance it all backfires badly.
Something bad happens and Nate breaks up with James, and then falls out with Margaret and the pair find that they are not so inseparable after all. Or are they?
This delicate and very touching take on what is essentially a type of a May to December relationship succeeds so well as the two characters are beautifully written and genuinely really best friends even though other people in their lives simply cannot understand how this possibly can be. The performances by the two actors are so spot on … young Tyler Ross as the quiet serious Nate, and Natalie West as the hesitant and awkward Margaret. (I didn’t recognize Ms. West but I knew that she looked very familiar, as so she might as she played Crystal in the ‘Roseanne’ TV Series for years).
It’s a small gentle movie about real friendship and the work of writer/director Nathan Adloff. It opens this week in NY, BUT the good news is that it is also On Demand NOW, so if you are in the middle of nowhere (cinematically speaking) like me, then you can still get to see it. And this quiet wee gem definitely deserves an audience.
