Al's Omniflick: The Overnight

Sunday, July 5, 2015

The Overnight

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Patrick Brice/Starring: Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godreche

The Overnight tells the story of a couple newly transplanted to L.A. from their former Seattle home who are eager to make friends in their new surroundings, only to find their endeavor comes with complications. Penned and directed by Patrick Brice, the story's tone shifts slightly from comedy to drama midway through the film and becomes progressively weirder as the narrative unfolds. The psychosexual hang-ups that surface at a get-to-know-you dinner become something to explore rather than lampoon, which the film accomplishes with a light but respectful earnestness.

Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling (Orange is the New Black) play Alex and Emily; former Seattle residents who have just occupied new digs in Los Angeles with their young son. When we first see them, Alex and Emily are in a coital embrace and near climax. She urges him on; directing his pelvic movements but before the act can be consummated, the couple stop to stimulate themselves (for reasons that become clearer later). Their son chooses this moment to barge into the room to humorously interrupt the couple's auto-stimulation.

Anxious about making friends in their new community, we see Alex and Emily discuss the possibilities of meeting new people.
In a subsequent scene, we see Alex watching over his son at a playground. While Alex makes friendly eye contact with other adults, he finds his amiable overtures go unreciprocated. He is relieved when Emily shows up to provide company. While watching their son play with another boy, they see the father approach the two kids. They become puzzled when the father make his way to them while holding up a gummy worm their son offered to the other boy. The father, Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) is indignant about the dietary transgression until he assures Alex and Emily he is only joking. A friendly conversation is struck as Kurt's son plays happily with Alex and Emily's boy. Before long, Kurt invites Alex and Emily for dinner. Seeing it as a opportunity to make friends, they accept.

Alex and Emily show up at Kurt's home, only to find it more luxurious than they anticipated. Alex and Emily meet Kurt's lovely French wife, Charlotte (Judith Godreche) and the evening proceeds swimmingly at first. After pleasant dinner chit chat, Kurt and Charlotte persuade Alex and Emily to allow their son to stay the night to allow the adults children-free time.

We know instinctively that the evening will veer into stranger territory and it does. After Charlotte mentions her dual professions of masseuse and actress, Alex asks if they might have seen her in anything they might know. Eager to show his wife's acting, Kurt plays a DVD of Charlotte in a room with another woman. The woman asks her to remove her shirt and when she does, we also see her pull down her bra while a breast pump is applied. Alex and Emily's stunned reaction is one of the highlights of the film and is quite funny. The evening becomes stranger when Kurt shows Alex his paintings of anuses while Charlotte and Emily chat in the bedroom.

The audience can easily guess at this point where this all might lead, especially after the following scene of the two couples sitting around the pool. A bong is brought out and shared by all, which only intensifies Alex and Emily's suspicion that Kurt and Charlotte may have a swinging agenda, which induces much anxiety. When Kurt decides to swim in the nude, he is joined soon after by Charlotte, who also shares her husband's unselfconscious attitude about swimming naked. Alex and Emily are naturally reluctant and employ several excuses about not wanting to join them. Alex calls Emily inside briefly to discuss the situation and reveals his hang-up about what he feels is an inadequately sized member, which is made more acute when Kurt's prodigiously-sized version is seen by all. When Kurt feels insulted by what he perceives as the couple's disdain for being in the pool with them, Alex explains to everyone present how self-conscious and ashamed he is about his feelings of proportional inadequacy. Feeling reassured by Kurt and Charlotte, Alex strips off his clothes and exuberantly jumps into the pool, while Emily remains in her underwear.

As a strange evening slowly evolves into something bizarre, Kurt coaxes Alex into posing for one of his paintings, albeit with his pants on. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Emily drive to what is presumably a spa-like establishment. Emily discovers to her horror that the place (in the wee hours of the morning, what else could it be?) is more dubious than she thought, particularly after she witness Charlotte perform an act on a stranger.

On returning home, all the doubts and suspicions come to a head when Alex discovers Emily has been concealing dark secrets of her own while he levels accusations at Kurt for wanting sleep with his wife. The truth that emerges is quite surprising, and just when the roil of the evening looks to be dispelled by rapprochement, the film takes another unexpected turn.

The Overnight is hardly spellbinding cinema, but it is funny and daring in a way that few films care to be. It doesn't treat everyone's issues, which are all sex-related, as excuses for adolescent tittering. It instead finds the humor in situations and hopes the audience can commiserate with the character's psychological frailties rather than see them as something to be glibly ridiculed.

The success of any chamber piece is always contingent on the performances, which this quartet delivers expertly. Adam Scott is an actor that can elicit one's sympathy and irritation at the same time. Alex is a nice challenge for him, for many reasons; one being his willingness to appear as an un-endowed man. It's been awhile since I've seen Judith Godreche in any movie but she makes the most of her time here, as does Jason Schwartzman, who in a way plays against type.

I can only give credit to the producers--one of them being Mark Duplass--for having the brass to release the film during the blockbuster-laden summer season. It certainly is welcome relief.

The Overnight isn't a great film, but it is quite satisfying and often funny. A chamber drama is hard to pull off; Brice has managed to mostly succeed with his own. The story suggests that hang-ups are common though diverse in many fascinating ways, even if we may think otherwise.

What might have become a tedious farce is instead a light romp. As the mid-summer movie mark rapidly recedes, it is nice to know that films like Brice's can still be found where we least expect them.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.