Tribeca: "The Overnight"

Abstew continues our coverage of the just wrapped Tribeca Film Festival...

Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) are young parents that have recently moved from Seattle to the very different world of Los Angeles. Emily has thrown herself into her career, but Alex bemoans the fact that as an adult that spends his time at home with his young son, there's no easy way to make new friends. It's a very real question that most adults face, if you're no longer involved in institutions like school and business, where exactly do you make new friends? And while that might be the film's initial question, the resulting film has decidedly more adult intentions on its mind...

After meeting hipster LA dad Kurt (played by a fedora-wearing Jason Schwartzman) at a nearby playground after their sons have hit it off, Kurt invites the young couple over to his house that evening for dinner with himself and his wife Charlotte (French actress Judith Godrèche). Their new friends seem perfect. They live in a stunning mansion, Kurt is working on a system to purify drinking water, and, best of all, Kurt is great with the kids, getting them to fall asleep with an impromptu song. But once the children are asleep, the new couple's seeming perfection gives way to a much more unorthodox dynamic.

While getting to know their new friends better, they find that Charlotte used to work as an actress. Naturally Alex and Emily are curious as to what kind of work she was involved in and Kurt puts in a sample of her work - a topless model for breast-feeding instructional videos. It's the first of many unconventional twists that will mark the rest of the evening for the couple and the film as a whole. Nothing that follows is predictibale, but nor does it ever really feel entirely plausible either. 

There is something off with the new couple (Kurt shows Alex a series of paintings he's working on called "Portals" which turns out to be close-ups of anuses), but perhaps desperate to make new connections and not wanting to insult people they just met, Alex and Emily are intrigued enough to see where the night will take them (despite all conventional wisdom implying that they would run as soon as things get as weird as they do). And in the film's most talked about scene, outfitted in the most fake prosthetics this side of Dirk Diggler, Alex confronts his own body issues when comparing his, ahem, short comings compared to Kurt. It's an interesting dynamic to have men explore as often women are the one's that deal with the topic of body image. But it also feels a little shallow and not as groundbreaking as the film thinks it's being. It would also be more profound if their manhoods weren't so laughably constructed.

The four actors are game for the twists and turns the screenplay throws at them. And all are equally adept at the film's oddball comedy, but are also willing to show more vulnerability (escpecially Adam Scott) and it's the strength of its actors that make The Overnight worth taking. But writer/director Patrick Brice's screenplay, while far from conventional, starts to feel like it was based on a letter from Penthouse forum and ultimately feels too silly and unbelievable to leave a lingering impression, more like a memorable one-night stand than a lasting friendship.

Comments

[Henry]

Sounds almost phornographic.