It’s a dreadful feeling to know, deep down, that you’re not where you should be in life. It’s a feeling that can strike at any age, really, but Noah Baumbach‘s generational comedy While We’re Young aligns itself with the middle-aged set with which the Brooklyn-bred director associates. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a New York couple in their mid-40s who glom onto a young hipster couple in their twenties (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) as a way of redefining and rejuvenating their relationship and finding their place in the world. It’s a witty, funny, sharply composed film about mid-life restlessness and paranoia that unfortunately takes a sour turn in its third act, which is so hostile and caustic it ends things on an unpleasantly dour note.

Josh (Stiller) and Cornelia (Watts) live in a gray domestic malaise, living in comfort in their cozy New York apartment. Comfort; not contentment. While most couples their age, like their buddies Fletcher and Melina (Adam Horovitz and Maria Dizzia, respectively), repurpose their lives by having a baby, thereby solving any identity crisis they might have (or at least distract themselves from it). Josh and Cornelia are still undecided on whether they want to have kids or not, but a random friendship they strike up with Jamie (Driver) and Darby (Seyfried), a vibrant pair of young lovebirds, sucks them into a world of hipster cool that makes them excited about living life again.

Josh and Cornelia’s silly attempts to acclimate to millennial culture is the main source of humor, and being that Baumbach is a mid-lifer living in New York, he’s clearly got a grip on what’s funny about people in their 40s trying to act like their younger friends. Whether it’s Cornelia practicing moves she learned at a hip-hop dance class or Josh pulling a back muscle while riding bikes with Jamie, the jokes are all hilarious and presented sneakily enough by Baumbach that they don’t appear as broad gags (even though, really, that’s exactly what they are). When Josh starts wearing an ill-fitting fedora to mimic his buddy Jamie, it makes for a running visual gag that echoes Stiller’s quick turn as “Tom Crooze”, Tom Cruise’s loser stunt double, in a sketch they did at the 2000 MTV Movie Awards. Driver looks like a slick Brooklynite wearing a cool hat; Stiller looks like a clown.

What’s also funny is Baumbach’s spot-on portrayal of hipster culture. Jamie and Darby love to run through abandoned tunnels at night, make artisanal ice cream, throw summer block parties, and listen to Lionel Richie on vinyl. Their phony adoption of vintage things and forced eschewing of all technology hints at the major conflict on the horizon. Jamie is an aspiring documentary filmmaker, which is how he connects with Josh, who’s a more experienced (struggling) documentarian himself. When we discover the real reason Jamie befriended ol’ “Joshie”, his true nature is revealed and the movie becomes something of a curmudgeon, presenting the young characters as entitled pests.

In the film’s easygoing first two-thirds, Stiller seems to be struggling to fight off the manic, fidgety mode of acting he’s so comfortable in. When the Jamie revelation comes, however, Stiller reverts back to the panicked, fidgety actor we’re all so familiar with, and it’s for the worst. Josh’s arc is an interesting one, in which he learns to let go of his competitive, jealous nature and be at ease with himself, but Stiller is so agitating on-screen that it’s a little too easy to stop caring about him. Driver’s character isn’t likable either, so all we’re left with are the two female counterparts, both of whom aren’t afforded nearly enough time. By the end of While We’re Young, there’s an overriding feeling of apathy for the characters. It’s a shame, because in the first half of the movie we learn to like them, but after the shit hits the fan, our affection for them never returns.

Driver’s lanky physique and dopey charm is perfect for the role of Jamie. There are some nice, subtle details to the character Baumbach throws in, like how Jamie sometimes ends some sentences with “see?”, like someone from a vintage gangster movie. Watts and Seyfried are terrific, but unfortunately fade into the background as the plot becomes progressively more fixated on Stiller. Charles Grodin is pitch-perfect as Cornelia’s gruff, revered documentarian father, whose success is a point of envy and rage for Josh, ever the insulated starving artist.

Surprisingly, the breakout star of the film is Horovitz, whose measured, even-keeled performance is the polar opposite of the wild-man Ad-Rock persona he flaunted for so many years in the Beastie Boys. (Stiller, on the other hand, loses his composure as the film goes on.) He’s shockingly good, and the prospect of him working with Baumbach again (or with anyone for that matter) excites me. While We’re Young is a mostly breezy movie that’s mostly very enjoyable and would have been great save for the uneven drama that emerges near the end making the film more of a downer than it needed to be.

Noah Baumbach loves making movies. Somehow, he’s got two coming out in 2015: Mistress America, his latest collaboration with Frances Ha‘s Greta Gerwig, is tentatively set to come out later this year, and While We’re Young, a cross-generational comedy starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts, is out tomorrow in limited release, with an expansion to follow.

Stiller and Naomi play a married, middle-aged couple living in New York whose lives are rattled to the core when they meet a younger, more spontaneous, hipper couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) who inspire them to ditch their bland home-body life and reinvigorate their long-dormant adventurous side. The presence of the hip twenty-somethings eventually drives a wedge between them, leading to jealousy, restlessness, and self-loathing.

In a media roundtable interview, we spoke to Baumbach about being so prolific, the film’s generational theme, Adam Horovitz’s acting career, his relationship with Dreamworks Animation, writing the lead role for Stiller, his writing process, portraying hipsters, and much more.

Was the plan always to make While We’re Young and Mistress America back-to-back?
Yeah. It goes back even further. The initial plan was to make While We’re Young first, but it didn’t happen for various reasons. Then we made Frances Ha, and Ben was making Walter Mitty, which was a much longer commitment. Greta [Gerwig] and I were working on Mistress America and had this other movie we wanted to do, and we felt like, we’re not going to have enough time to finish it, but why don’t we just do it as far as we can do it. I knew we had enough time to shoot it and start cutting it, but I wasn’t going to be able to [finish it.] I actually cut it fairly well, but I wasn’t finished, so I made While We’re Young and then went back and finished Mistress America.

Several of your films have this generational conflict going on.
I wasn’t really that conscious of the notion of being young or old as much as I was characters that were interesting to me and stories that I was interested in telling. I was thinking about couples from different generations and how they interact, but I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of my other work. That doesn’t mean it’s not there.

You’ve got one of my childhood heroes in the movie, Adam Horovitz. He’s great in the film. From being around him do you get a sense that he might want to keep acting?
Yeah, I think so. I hope he’ll do it for me again. I love working with Adam. There was no question in my mind that he was going to be great. You could just tell.

In the credits you thank Dreamworks Animation.
I worked on Madagascar 3. They’ve been great partners in a way, and I really like working with them. I felt like I wanted to acknowledge their support for me even though they weren’t involved in this movie.

Were you thinking of Ben as your lead while you were writing the script?
I don’t always write with someone in mind, but I started writing this after Greenberg came out, and we had a really great time on that. There was a connection and we became friends. I did this one with him in mind, and it was clear to me early on that I wanted to write a comedy of a type, something that connected me to movies from my adolescence, when studios would make comedies for adults that could be mainstream and have broad humor, but could also be character oriented. I felt like using Ben’s comic iconography in my terrain.

One of the first things I asked Richard Linklater when I met him was if his actors improvised in his films, and he said, “No. Nothing.” It’s astonishing to me, because the dialogue sounds so natural, as if it had to be improvised, and yet it’s not at all. From what I understand you work the same way, with your actors not improvising at all on set.
To quote Richard Linklater, “No.” [laughs]

Does writing dialogue come naturally to you?
Dialogue for me is something that comes quickly. That doesn’t mean the scenes come quickly. Often I kind of write my way and have conversations [in my head] to find the characters and the scenes early on. In a way, I’m improvising with myself. I can write dialogue for quite some time, but it’s like, where in it is the scene? Sometimes you’re lopping off the top and bottom and it’s in the middle, and other times it’s like, I found it over here, and now I can start the scene. It really depends. In some ways, that’s the motor for me.

I admire the fact that your portrayal of hipsters is so balanced, making them very likable and not too douche-y.
Part of it is that we meet the [hipster couple] through Naomi and Ben. We’re kind of learning them through the eyes of another couple. Because Ben’s character is stuck in many ways and looking for answers, he puts so much of it on Adam Driver’s character. I felt like, from Adam Driver’s character’s perspective, no human being should have to bear the responsibility of saving somebody else’s life. As it turns out, he doesn’t hold up under that weight, nor should he. Some people have looked at it the other way. “You’re saying the hipsters are destroying [everything.]” But I don’t see it that way at all. There are also arguments about technology and truth in art, which are subsets of the major story that I’m telling, which is of a marriage. Sometimes you have to come apart to come back together, which is a traditional comedy structure. Shakespearean even. In that I could then wrestle with all these arguments about things in the moment and generational fights without needing to take sides. I wouldn’t know what side to take anyway.

Charles Grodin is sort of a picky actor and doesn’t work as much as a lot of us would like him to. How did you get him involved?
One of my casting directors, Doug Aibel, was at a benefit or something and saw Grodin there. He intimated that he was open to working, and we happened to be casting. We were thinking about this character, and Doug told me [about Grodin] immediately, and I said, “Let’s make this happen.” I met with him, had a long meeting, and he did it.

A small detail I noticed was that Adam Driver’s character sometimes ends sentences with “see.”
In crafting the way he talked, I felt like that was a sort of old-timey way of saying things. It might be something he kind of took to. It’s kind of like a Damon Runyan thing, like he’d be into old New York. The way he says “beautiful” is like in the ’60s when people would say, “It’s just beautiful! It’s just beautiful!” It’s like a compilation of old stuff.

You’ve mentioned that you were trying to get The Squid and the Whale into the Criterion Collection. Has there been any progress on that?
Yes. It’s more like dealing with a rights thing right now, but yeah. Everybody wants it to happen.

The soundtrack is really eclectic. Why Vivaldi?
Vivaldi supplied a timeless aspect to the movie, which balanced it out because it is so eclectic. I felt like the overarching score would almost take you into another era entirely, or all eras, really. Vivaldi for me also brings back older movies that I liked. Kramer vs Kramer is one that used Vivaldi very well, obviously to different effect. I thought it was working really well for the movie, but it also was bringing me back in touch with movies from my childhood that had real meaning for me. I saw this movie as my version of those films. I love the energy, and there’s something very New York-y about it.

I read in an interview that you loved Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr. and that you thought her performance was very funny. I agree.
I saw humor in it. That audition [scene] she does…you can’t do that if you don’t know what’s funny. It’s funny because it’s not funny. I’d wanted to work with Naomi for a while, and there were times when I thought of her, but I didn’t have a part for her. She’s just somebody I’ve had on a wish list of actors I’ve wanted to work with. This just seemed like an ideal thing for her. Again, thinking of Kramer vs Kramer, I thought Ben and her together almost evoked Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. We even sort of dressed them similarly. I was thinking of that symmetry. She’s just lovely. I always think of the hip-hop [dance class] scene. I felt like Naomi Watts going into that class feels much more intimidating because you feel her anxiety about what’s going to happen. Thus, it’s that much funnier when she actually jumps in and commits. It was like a way to have a comic set piece without announcing, “Here comes the funny dance scene.”

A new Noah Baumbach release is indie film’s version of a tentpole summer blockbuster. The writer-director behind The Squid and the Whale and Frances Ha is returning in a few weeks with his newest film, While We’re Young, and the second trailer for the film has been released.

While We’re Young stars Baumbach vet Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a middle-aged couple whose relationship is tested after they meet a spontaneous couple played by Amanda Seyfried and Adam Driver. The film premiered at TIFF 2014, where we saw it and called it a “very funny film thanks to a wonderful cast.”

While we’re anticipating the film’s release on March 27th, check out the trailer below!

While We’re Young Trailer

Two years ago Noah Baumbach charmed Toronto audiences with Frances Ha, although fans of the whimsical free-form narrative in his last film might be disappointed with the concise structure and fastened script found in his latest film While We’re Young. Forty-something married couple Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) begin to notice the signs of growing older–close friends are having babies, arthritis settles in, and bed time is always at 11 o’clock sharp. Though it’s when they meet a spontaneous mid-20s couple Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) that they really start to question their own lives.

There’s a huge age gap between the couples which accounts for how differently they act and think from each other. Though ironically, it’s the older couple that has the CD collection and prefers digital films while the younger one enjoys antiquated technology like vinyl records and VHS tapes. Spending time with the impromptu hipster couple makes Josh and Cornelia feel young again, envying the way they show unconditional love towards each other. But they soon realize it’s easy to take for granted what already you have and that everyone has their own problems.

Unlike Frances Ha which pleased critics and the arthouse crowd, While We’re Young tightens things up on all levels, making it appeal to a wider audience. While the comedy is more conventional, it’s nonetheless a very funny film thanks to a wonderful cast led by Stiller and Driver. Baumbach continues to show he has a knack for creating relatable characters, this time in the form of relationship routines and the act of growing old. Despite a formulated script and an awkward rant on Fair Use policies, While We’re Young remains a very watchable film that many people will find enjoyable.

Co-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman bring the story of Linda Lovelace, a celebrity in the adult entertainment industry, to the very screen that brought her fame into mainstream culture from her seductive role in Deep Throat. Lovelace was made for half of the amount that Deep Throat was made for back in 1972 (not including adjustment for inflation) with seemingly a quarter of the amount of inspiration. The film attempts to produce laughs, chills, and entertainment, but fails to deliver any of those qualities.

One of the first things you are likely to notice about Lovelace are the aesthetics of the film; a high contrasting warm color palette shot on grainy film stock against a rocking soundtrack helps recreate the time period. Beginning in 1970, Linda Lovelace is (Amanda Seyfried) tanning and talking about her sex life (or more accurately the lack thereof) with her best friend Patsy (Juno Temple) in the backyard of her parents’ house. The Virgin Mary statue in the front yard serves as a symbol of her conservative upbringing and a nice contrast to what is about to unfold.

Linda is swept off her feet by an older man named Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard)—a topless bar owner who views Linda not only as girlfriend but a potential worker. The film skips ahead, something that happens quite frequently, to the two living together in New York, where Traynor’s abusive and manipulative side begins to show. One of the best scenes of the film is when Traynor decides to exploit her oral sex skills in an upcoming production of a pornography film aptly titled Deep Throat (which ends up being a massive box office hit). Linda’s naïve personality is put on display when a makeup artist discovers bruises on her legs that Linda passes off as just being clumsy—an obvious lie that fools nobody.

The closing credits inform us that Linda spent twenty years speaking out against domestic violence and the pornography industry—the film only captures the former while practically skipping the latter. Even though Lovelace does not glorify the porn industry, it does not exactly condemn it either. With all the attention on the domestic violence Linda endures, the adult-film industry is portrayed much tamer than one would think.

Inconsistency plagues the film more than anything else. While most of the scenes play out with so much exaggerated drama that it feels like it was made for the Lifetime Channel, others are chock-full of campy sex jokes that lighten the mood too much. This combination not only made the tone of the film unclear, but also much less effective when it attempts to have an emotional impact on the audience later on.

Despite setbacks in other areas of the film, the acting performances found in Lovelace are top notch; aside from the surprisingly unconvincing James Franco as Hugh Hefner. Amanda Seyfried takes on the daring role as wide-eyed innocent girl turned porn star in perfect stride. Peter Sarsgaard handles the duality required of the role flawlessly; going from charming in one scene to terrifying in the next. Even the smaller roles from Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, and Bobby Cannavale are equally as good.

Lovelace is a story that is practically served on a silver platter considering it is a real-life story of an ordinary woman turned overnight adult-film star, who eventually speaks out against a brutal and abusive relationship with her manager and pornography industry, yet somehow this biopic manages to be both unexciting and unemotional. On top of that, Lovelace never ventures below the surface of the story that most people are vaguely familiar with already. Credit the cast for going well beyond the material they were given, without their performances the film would be a complete catastrophe.

Lovelace trailer:

Mark Webber’s sophomore effort as a director, The End of Love, follows a jobless single-father who is struggling to make ends meet while caring for his son. The film feels incredibly personal to Webber as nearly everyone in the cast goes by their real name and his son in the film is played be his actual child. It is the type of film that we come to expect out of Sundance Film Festival, a realistic portrait of an aspiring artist with an attempt to tug at your heartstrings. Although it does not venture far from that “Sundance formula”, The End of Love stands out above the rest because of the spectacular acting performances between the father and son.

Mark (Mark Webber), clearly exhausted, pleads with his two-year-old son Isaac (Isaac Love) to go back to sleep for just five more minutes. Because Mark is a single-father and can barely make his rent payments, paying for daycare every day is out of the question. Therefore, Mark is forced to bring Isaac along everywhere he goes, including his acting auditions that turn disastrous because of it. With his roommates on his back about paying rent, life delivers a knockout punch when his car is towed, setting him back half a grand.

Just as things could not get any worse for the struggling father and adorable son, a bone is thrown in their direction. Mark ends up meeting a lovely woman (Shannyn Sossamon) who is not only a single parent herself, but runs an indoor playground for children. You can tell his dating skills are rusty when she must make all the first moves, but the real kicker is when he tries to advance the relationship on the first date. This is painful to witness because you cannot help but feel remorse for him. And it is not the last time he makes the mistake.

Without question what makes The End of Love so moving is the empathy we feel for Mark and Isaac. The dynamic between the two is incredibly intimate because they are actually father and son in real life. This means the youngster did not need to recite lines and had the freedom to be his natural youthful self. Results of this improvised approach pays dividends in the long run by making the whole production seem exceptionally realistic.

Serving as a great contrast to the broke wannabe actor are the onslaught of cameos made by Amanda Seyfried, Jason Ritter, Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnson, and Michael Cera, all basically playing themselves as highly successful people in Hollywood. The unfortunate part is their success in the field gives Mark false illusions that he is close to achieving the same. But this is not a pity party for Webber’s character. The ratio between the audience feeling bad for him and despising him for doing something irresponsible is close to a one to one match.

Perhaps even worse than an ending that is wholly upbeat or devastatingly depressing is one that takes the middle of the road, and unfortunately that is where The End of Love lands. There is a sense that the lead character is finally coming to terms with his wife’s passing, but leaves enough unanswered to make the audience neither cheer nor weep. Unlike the rest of the film where emotions are heightened, the ending is much more complacent. In the grand scheme of it all, this is a fairly minor quibble in an otherwise notable character study about coming to terms with difficult situations.

I learned pretty quick the importance of showing up to the press screenings early. I’d heard this advice shortly after checking in and receiving my credentials; but, for my first screening of the festival–after arriving to the theater a good forty minutes before the film–I was told by the door manager that they probably wouldn’t open up until just before the show, and if I got in line five minutes before I would be fine. I half trusted her, went to grab a snack, and returned fifteen minutes before curtain time. The theater doors had already been opened, and nearly all of the seats were occupied. I managed to find a place in the front row, which was far from ideal, but at least it was a seat. Since then I have made a point of arriving a solid thirty minutes ahead.

Sometimes the press is let straight into the theater, but often there is a screening going on prior and we have to wait. Generally I’m not a fan of lines. I doubt if anyone is. However, in an international setting with so many people sharing a common interest in one place, I have yet to find the time spent in line at all terrible. Norwegian journalists specializing in American Pop Culture, German media students, and the occasional Canadian blogger are all just a shout away. Conversation isn’t difficult to initiate; simply turning around and asking where someone is from, if they were at this-or-that press conference, or if they are excited for the screening usually does the trick. The next thing you know you are discussing, debating, and critiquing film with someone from an entirely different corner of the world with a totally different outlook on cinema.

I have made a point of making my program selection as diverse as possible, while still attending the bigger film screenings. Because not everyone is as interested in the big name films from the US, it is typical for conversation to rapidly drift to the smaller, less known films in the festival line up. Coming from the US, I take as much as I can from films that depict a culture I am unfamiliar with, but having the opportunity to discuss the technique and story of a French drama with someone who is more than familiar with the director’s work and the social commentary surrounding a film brings about a whole new understanding and experience from what I initially left the theater with. This being said, if you ever have the opportunity to attend a large festival, pick a film or two that you might not typically watch, and take advantage of the other attendees, because there is always more than one way to experience a movie.

Lovelace

As I mentioned in the last post, the festival this year is presenting a surprising number of films that deal with issues of sex and pornography–more so than ever before, according to one of the festival programmers. Lovelace is one such film that takes a critical look at the porn industry by telling the story of the first real porn star, Linda Lovelace–star of the first real mainstream porn film, Deep Throat; portrayed by Amanda Seyfried. Lovelace takes place in the early and mid–seventies, when the porn industry was just beginning to really take off. The director of the film, Rob Epstein, commented in the press conference on the significance of the time period, stating it was a new age of sexual openness, but sometimes there are unintended consequences that can arise from this new openness.

The story is told twice from two perspectives. First is the story as seen from the outside, as Linda meets, falls in love with, and marries Chuck Traynor–who is responsible for getting her involved in the making of Deepthroat. The story is typical, and while moments might feel somewhat tense or uncomfortable for the characters, the world shown is full of glamour and success. It is an outsider’s view. The story then jumps ahead six years to Linda preparing for a polygraph test, per request of her publisher as she is about to release a book on her experiences. The story returns to the point right after she marries Traynor, and the glamour is replaced with scenes of abuse, domestic violence, and Linda’s struggle to escape the world she has been forced into.

Amanda Seyfried commented that the production of Lovelace was the most fun she has ever had on a set. While the film is serious in nature, it’s not hard to see how she came to this conclusion, as she totally breaks her typical character caste. The blonde, wholesome, heartthrob we typically see her as is replaced with a freckly, brunette, girl-next-door who is forced to function in extremely trying circumstances. The film brings out the full flair of the seventies, including high contrast, high grain film stock, great costumery and set direction, and a fantastic soundtrack. The film also stars a very dark Peter Sarsgaard and a cameo of James Franco as Hugh Hefner.

RATING: 8.7

Amanda Seyfried and James Franco

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman is the feature debut of Fredrik Bond, who–before this point–has made a name for himself directing Heineken commercials. The film is fairly grandiose in production scale, and features a big name cast including Shia LeBeouf, Evan Rachel Wood, and a post-Harry Potter Rupert Grint.

Filmed on location in Romania, the film tells the tale of Charlie Countryman, who–after the death of his mother, and on the request of a drug-induced vision of her postmortem–takes off for Eastern Europe to find himself. After a passenger on his flight dies, Charlie decides to deliver a hat to the daughter of the deceased passenger and immediately falls in love. Unfortunately for Charlie, the now girl-of-his-dreams was once married to a dangerous killer, who recently returned to the country. In his adventure, Charlie faces death around nearly every corner, experiences a fancifully wild Eastern European party scene, and enjoys a crazy drug trip or two–all in the name of love, of course.

Charlie Countryman is a very typical love story–verging on the traditional chick-flick format, but set in an extreme, action adventure wonderland. Where a typical romance movie about new love might show a man concerning himself about simply losing the woman of his dreams, for Charlie it involves getting beaten to a pulp and possibly meeting a violent end. The film opens, closes, and in brief interlude features a faceless narrator who turns out to be not very reliable. The film works to creat many visual spectacles–usually drug induced–and makes use of typical hollywood action sequences we are used to seeing in contemporary films of this genre. In all, I found Charlie Countryman a bit over the top, unreliable, and had difficulty believing in the characters. However, if you are just looking to have a good time and enjoy a fast paced action adventure, it might be right up your alley.

RATING: 6.7

I ended my day by attending one of the five short film programs. I have always loved short films, and admire the ability to tell a solid story in a brief period of time. Unfortunately the shorts program I saw was very disappointing. I can appreciate a film as strictly an art piece, but if they too avant garde to tell a cohesive story I do not believe they belong on such a prestigious stage as Berlinale. During the festival’s Talent Campus–a lecture series featured throughout the festival–there is a presentation by the short film programmers, in which they discuss what they look for in a short film. I will make sure to attend this, as well as a few more short programs, and maybe they can explain their approach a bit better.

COMING UP: As for day three, Maladies with James Franco and Catherine Keener is on deck.