Maggie's Plan

**Spoiler Alert

Director: Rebecca Miller/Starring: Ethan Hawke, Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, Wallace Shawn, Travis Fimmel and Mina Sundwall

Rebecca Miller's Maggie's Plan is a difficult film to review (I still consider my posts more impressions than reviews) because it seems to have strengths and weaknesses in equal measure. Its flaws aren't necessarily crippling but they keep an otherwise interesting movie from being totally satisfying. It's pleasing to know a female director has been able to make films on her own terms without having to compromise her vision or standards, but I have to admit, I've never been a fan of Miller's films. They always seem important for a moment but never leave a lasting impression. In fact, I can't remember the titles of any of her former films and chances are, I'll forget this film in a few months time too but I also have to admit her latest is one of her better efforts. It doesn't always work but her cerebral characters are well-drawn, with distinctive personalities that betray insecurity and weakness. If the situations, characters and the story feel too much like vintage Woody Allen filtered through Noah Baumbach, it mimics their films well enough to be entertaining. Maggie's Plan isn't as funny as Woody's best work but its humor is subtle; aiming for sophistication and wit.

The film doesn't waste a moment establishing character as Maggie Hardin (Greta Gerwig; uncharacteristically non-irritating) meets her close friend Tony (Bill Hader) on the street. In their exchange, we learn Maggie's search for a sperm-donor has born fruit though Tony is disdainful of her choice; a pickle-entrepreneur by the name of Guy who was also their college classmate. We also learn Maggie--by her own admission--has never been able to maintain a long-term relationship; hence her need for a sperm donor.

When Maggie later shows up at the school where she serves as a liaison to the business community for artistic students looking to market their work, she learns her paycheck is delinquent. She meets another faculty member who shares a similar last name; John Harding (Ethan Hawke) who is also short a paycheck. They suggest to the difficult clerk their similar names may be responsible for the mix-up. The clerical error allows them to meet and make small talk. During their conversation, we learn John is a highly respected academic in the esoteric field of ficto-critical anthropology. Later, during a lunch in the school cafeteria, Maggie catches sight of him then again in Washington Park, where they stroll and become more acquainted. In the course of their conversation, John talks about a novel he is writing and when Maggie shows interest, he asks her to read the first chapter, to which she eagerly agrees. After Maggie praises Tony's novel to the heavens, their friendship and the story thickens.

In a subsequent scene, we get a taste of John's home life, where we meet his wife and colleague Georgette (Julianne Moore, having fun with a thick, Icelandic accent); an icy intellectual who seems indifferent to her husband's creative pursuit.

One night, after the pickle entrepreneur, Guy (Travis Fimmel), visits Maggie sans the sperm sample she requested, he suggests impregnating her the old fashioned way, which elicits a polite rejection. Having selected Guy as a donor because of his mathematical background, he explains to Maggie why he rejected a life as an academic to operate his own business. He expresses what he finds beautiful about mathematics--and though it sounds poetic; it also sounds unconvincing as movie dialogue. When he steps out of the bathroom, sample in hand, he sees her dance around her apartment and watches, enchantedly; his adoration of her palpable.

His visit precedes John's as the academic/writer-manque arrives to say he's been inadvertently locked out of his house. During his visit, he professes his love to Maggie and mentions the end of his marriage. Following their mutual declarations of love, the two act on their passion and shortly after the film moves forward a year as we see Maggie with her small child, her motherhood secured.

Though the film is described in ads as being screwball, it's hard to see the film as such. There is no shortage of comedy but the story's poignant, dramatic moments make the film's screwball appellation seem strange. The humor is also far too subtle at times to be legitimately screwball. Screwball tends to not be very subtle. But let's move on.

The story becomes a triangle of sorts as John and Georgette's kids spend time between two homes, while his daughter with Maggie brings a tangle to the equation. Though Georgette accepts the situation, she naturally sees Maggie as a homewrecker.

The triangle becomes a quagmire when Maggie begins to see John as self-involved and selfish; his novel an excuse to avoid his family and parental duties. She accepts the sad truth that he was most likely better off with Georgette and sets about concocting a plan to return him to his former wife, thus extricating herself from her unhappy marriage. Of course the plan involves Georgette; who wants nothing more than to have him back. The story's third act involves the plan's impact on both families.

But another issue, hinted at earlier, addresses the question as to who Maggie's daughter's father might truly be.

I thought Gerwig was quite good as Maggie. Though her character bears a close resemblance to many others she's played in films past, she seems more real here. What is particularly interesting about Maggie is the dubiousness of her victim status. As much as John seems to blame for their unhappy marriage, her claim about not being able to maintain a relationship for longer than six months makes us wonder if she is indeed an agent of her own misery.

Julianne Moore is able to find pathos and humor in her role, which was no mean feat considering her accent evokes memories of her character in The Big Lebowski. Georgette seems more like someone we would find in a Woody Allen movie; a character we might laugh at for her lofty, intellectual pretensions. Georgette comes awfully close to being cartoonish but Moore is able to make us forget the accent and focus on the character.

Ethan Hawke has done some fine work in film lately. He was terrific in Born to Be Blue and is again as an academic who believes he has a great novel in him and is prepared to sacrifice his and everyone else's happiness to achieve his goal.

The film made me smile at times and chuckle once or twice but the its best quality are its dramatic moments, which are at times very compelling.

Like the characters in Noah Baumbach's films, Miller's aren't people I feel I would want to know but they aren't tedious either. Tiresome sometimes, but not tedious. I think Miller had the good sense to restrict her story to a 90 minute running time so as to not give us too much of their company. She does a great job satirizing the intellectual world without making her characters seem buffoonish. Maggie's Plan is her most accomplished work yet, in my opinion. It's certainly her most enjoyable movie to date.

Mistress America

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Noah Baumbach/Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke, Matthew Shear and Michael Chernus

If you were feeling cheated that director Noah Baumbach had only one film to dislike in 2015, then let me mollify your disappointment. His new release of the insufferable and grating Mistress America quickly follows on the heels of While We're Young; which failed to dazzle audiences back in the early spring. His earlier film, though hardly great, wasn't gag-inducing. His new film, which he co-wrote with his muse and girlfriend Greta Gerwig, pulls out all the stops to be irritating and hellishly unfunny.

The problems with this film could roll out endlessly on an assembly line conveyor belt. Aside from unfunny characters and dialogue, its major flaws are its two female leads: Greta Gerwig and Lola Kirke, who quickly become ear-sores. Gerwig has fast become one of the more annoying actresses in cinema and that's saying a lot. You have to be ferociously industrious to be more of an irritant than Keira Knightley and Cameron Diaz. The last Baumbach/Gerwig character creation: Frances Ha was commensurately annoying.

Baumbach and Gerwig, in conceiving Brooke, were aiming for complexity in creating a character who is supposed to be infuriating, narcissistic, egotistical, ambitious, petty, manic but also redeemably charming. That approach to character design is sound but Baumbach and Gerwig fall well short of their ambition. Gerwig's Brooke not only makes one wish she would shut up for one second and not express all her ridiculous ideas and thoughts, but suffer exile; preferably somewhere in war-torn Syria.

When the film begins, we see a lonely, socially-awkward and romantically-challenged young Barnard student named Tracy (Lola Kirke). It doesn't help that her writing ambitions, which involve having a story accepted by the snootily exclusive school literary journal are temporarily dashed when they refuse one of her submissions. A fellow student, writer and potential boyfriend; Tony (Matthew Shear), recognizes her talent and is quick to deem it superior to his own. Tracy's hopes for a romantic union with Tony are squelched when she discovers he has taken up with a needy, jealous drag named Nicolette (Jasmine Cephas Jones).

Not long after, Tracy receives a phone call from a woman named Brooke, who is to become her step-sister. The two agree to meet in Times Square.

When Tracy first sees her step-sister-to-be, Brooke is making her way down brilliantly red bleachers set up in the Square. The striking red is a visual cue that Brooke is someone colorful and exciting, which she seems to be when she exuberantly descends the steps to meet Tracy.

Tracy learns quickly (as does the audience) that Brooke is an ambitious woman with many irons-in-the-fire. She hopes to open a restaurant with the help of her Greek boyfriend and investor; the sole source of seed money.

Brooke is the kind of person who dominates every conversation with her favorite topic: herself, and never waits for an answer to any question she directs rhetorically to anyone around her. Her mind and mouth motor along at a breakneck pace, which are supposed to be amusing quirks. She tells Tracy; "I'm an autodidact. It means I'm self-taught; it's a word I self-taught myself." This is Baumbachian wit, which means it might elicit a grin from a viewer but hardly a chuckle.

Brooke bears a long-standing grudge against her former friend Mamie-Claire (Heather Lind) who once stole a t-shirt idea of hers before profiting from it. Feeding the grudge is Brooke's former relationship with Mamie-Claire's husband, Dylan (Michael Chernus).

When funding for Brooke's restaurant falls through; she desperately seeks out the help of Dylan, which means driving out to his and Heather's lush home in Connecticut. In tow are Tracy, Tony and Nicolette.

When the group arrives at Dylan's home, they are greeted by Mamie-Claire, who is less than enthused to see Brooke. When Mamie-Claire tells the group Dylan isn't home, Brooke insists they wait. Walking through the swank surroundings, Brooke and company encounter Mamie-Claire's book-group of expectant mother's, who are deep into a discussion of Faulkner.

Before long, Brooke and Mamie-Claire begin airing out their past grievances while the Nicolette-Tony-Tracy triangle reaches some kind of boiling point. This scene seemed quite ear-splitting to me. The constant, inane chatter--mostly generated by Brooke, whose voice becomes unbearably strident, and the glaring absence of witty repartee almost caused me to yell at the screen "will you all just shut the f*** up?" The sequence is hardly improved by the arrival of Dylan, who, to Mamie-Claire's dismay, is not only sympathetic to Brooke's restaurant idea, but titillated by her presence.

Brooke manages to finally make a formal business proposal to Dylan in the form of a monologue she presents to the entire group on a stage-like platform in the living room. Her proposal is supposed to be inspiring, which earns her not only applause but a few tears from the listeners. What the speech actually is is just more of Brooke's asinine verbalizing, which is anything but inspiring.

Dylan, concerned with Brooke's inability to follow through on anything, discourages the restaurant idea but offers to give her money in compensation for Mamie-Claire's t-shirt idea theft. Brooke sadly rejects his offer.

The Connecticut house scene is also supposed to be significant for Tracy, who incurs Brooke's wrath when it comes to light that her current story is entirely based on Brooke. A kind of anti-Tracy tribunal forms in the living room, led by Brooke, who denigrate her for her supposed treachery. The scene is ridiculous. I can't imagine any group of people would care so much about Tracy's ethical breach. It seemed like one more excuse for Baumbach's characters to spew drivel.

Back in New York City, Tracy manages to be accepted by the literary journal but quits them to form her own, in which she enlists Tony, who has also suffered the slings and arrows of the journal staff's snobby exclusiveness.

And of course the unfinished business between Brooke and Tracy is dealt with in a somewhat predictable manner. A final meeting between the two commences just as Brooke is about to leave for L.A.

There have been many movies this year, like summer blockbusters, that I've disliked but otherwise felt indifferent to. Baumbach's film is the only one in recent memory that I've actually DESPISED. If you can stand the company of a loathsome group of people who can't even be troubled to be endearingly loathsome, this is the flick for you.

Director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Last Days of Disco) made characters like those found in Baumbach's Mistress America fun to watch and to listen to. They were no less self-absorbed and highly-educated but Stillman's characters were also witty and charming in their own idiosyncratic ways. You might want to strangle them, but they might also make you laugh and if you couldn't always identify with their hyper-educated arrogance, they were nevertheless intriguing and fun company (oddly enough, Gerwig is in Stillman's Damsels in Distress). Baumbach and Gerwig's characters are just plain dull though they behave as if they're fascinating.

Greta Gerwig seems to play the same character in every film, which wouldn't be so bad if the characters were worth our attention. I saw one silly, critical comparison of her character to Holly Golightly. Being that I can't stand Holly Golightly either, this doesn't ring as a compliment. But I can tolerate Holly; Brooke I cannot.

Lola Kirke bears some of the blame for this dreariness with her barely-above-monotone line readings. It's hard to believe a person who seems so intellectually lifeless would be able to write something a school literary journal would consider readable. Kirke's performance could hardly be called acting. I've heard waitresses read off evening specials with more verve and conviction than Kirke expresses her lines. Her character is a drip only Baumbach could love.

I hope Baumbach doesn't take the initiative to release another film before the year's end; that would be horrifying. I've had my fill of his world of self-absorbed jerks, who seem to populate every one of his movies. If Gerwig and Baumbach continue on this track, look out; you may just have a series of one-note characters and excruciatingly unfunny situations and dialogue flooding your local theaters. If I see another of their collaborations, I'll be sure to wear ear-plugs. Maybe their movies play better that way?