Back when Apartment Troubles premiered at LAFF in June, the quirky comedy about two friends trying to make it in Manhattan on an artist’s salary (translation: no income at all) was called Trouble Dolls. A crumpled piece of paper at the beginning of the movie explains the Guatemalan myth of the trouble doll: A young girl can place one of these toy dolls under her pillow, and the doll will solve all her problems while she sleeps. Hey, a 20-something without financial support in the big city has to try something. But, needless to say, the dolls suck at their job. An eviction notice and one dead pet cat later, Olivia (Jennifer Prediger) and Nicole (Jess Weixler) are on a plane to LA to get away from it all. They stay with Nicole’s aunt Kimberley (Megan Mullally), a has-been judge on an America’s Got Talent-esque program. Nicole, a conceptual artist more prone to quote Chekhov than Katy Perry, can hardly stand in her aunt’s presence without a glass of red wine in hand. But broke and with nowhere to go, Nicole and Olivia take up residence in Kimberley’s home and before long are auditioning for the show.

Apartment Troubles marks the directorial and screenwriting debuts for both Weixler and Prediger. What I found interesting about the script—clearly intended to be a comedy—is that I didn’t do a whole lot of laughing. In some cases the humor seems to have been lost in translation: scenes with Will Forte, who plays a socially awkward but well-meaning guy who offers the girls a ride in LA, just completely fail to land. But jokes about a 30-year-old guy who still cares way too much about his mother’s approval turn out to be far more harmless than the bizarre plot twist with Aunt Kimberley, who takes a liking to Olivia (for more than just her voice). Their scenes together are more uncomfortable than entertaining, and like Forte’s character, completely tangential to the plot.

Where the movie succeeds is with the two leading ladies, and since this is ultimately a character piece with bits of humor thrown in to lighten its existential weight, their performances really do provide enough to make this is a worthwhile venture. I said I didn’t laugh a lot, but intentional or not, that’s something I kind of liked about this movie. It’s easy to take eccentric artsy types and make them into caricatures, but that’s not what this movie is really about. While a show like Girls helps us to laugh with a generation of girls who got their Bachelor degrees and make naive (sometimes absurd) life choices, I don’t think Apartment Troubles is really trying to critique its lead characters. Instead, I think it’s trying to ask if there is a place in this world for people like them, a question worth asking in an age where art degrees are looked at with the same disdain as drug addiction or sexual promiscuity. Nicole’s family treats her art ventures as a harmful and destructive life choice. One she could ultimately change. “I don’t think they want her around the kids,” Kimberley confesses to Olivia on why Nicole’s family may have taken a vacation without her.

Maybe it’s helpful here that Prediger and Weixler wrote the script, because Weixler’s Nicole, particularly, feels eccentric, yes, but like a living, breathing person. She has a way of delivering her lines with a certain calm and carefulness—a bit counter-stereotype for a role like this. There is, however, a deflatedness in her energy on-screen, like if she wasn’t too poor to eat something other than juice smoothies, she might want to try a small dosage of Zoloft. She’s been beaten down, and now her one remaining lifeline, her bestie Olivia, is making strides toward normalcy: successfully making small talk with strange dudes in cars, landing a TV ad, and insisting the girls apply for a silly reality TV show.

To be honest, if someone positioned this film to me as “two east coast girls take a leap of faith and go on a reality TV show,” I would have never hit play. The premise seems prime for obvious and overdone satire, but I think the reason it works here is because we never stray too far from a story of two friends. It’s not about auditioning for TV, it’s about two young ladies, finding their footing in the world. Their response to rejection shows the film’s subtle tension: these girls both desperately need each other and just as desperately need to separate from one another. Outside of the confines of whatever quirky art school they just graduated from, each has to learn to what extent she’ll adapt and which rules of society they’ll choose to play by.

The script doesn’t let Nicole go on depressive woe-is-me tangents, but as far as I’m concerned, this film is all about her, and taking an eccentric personality and treating her with the subtlety Weixler does is an appreciated surprise when dealing with this genre. By the movie’s end it’s not any external circumstance that lets us know she’ll be OK, but the way she quotes Chekov to a starving cat while sitting in a pile of trash outside her apartment (OK, I confess, this sounds hilarious—but it’s a genuinely tender moment). The fact that she can still see beauty in the struggle lets us know Nicole isn’t broken. And maybe it’s not she that needs to change, she just needs to change the minds of others.

It’s not a perfect script by any stretch, and it probably helps if you already have a little empathy for the plight of the artistically inclined, but the film has a lot of heart—and both Prediger and Weixler are transfixing on screen. It’s impossible not to root for them. Even I was able to forget that a conceptual piece about a dead cat could never do well on a cutthroat talent competition. That’s America’s loss.

A cross between the millennial musings of Lena Dunham and the dimwittedness of Romy and Michele, Trouble Dolls is a female buddy comedy for today’s self-aware art hipsters, or more specifically those looking to poke fun at them. Written and directed by its co-stars, actress Olivia (Jennifer Prediger) and artist Nicole (Jess Weixler) are best friends and roommates living the boho life in New York City. Their electricity is off (by choice they say), their rent is short, and they are starving (or on a cleanse, it’s all about perspective). When Olivia’s beloved cat Seagull dies unexpectedly, Nicole decides a weekend vacation is in order. Utilizing her father’s private jet, she whisks Olivia off to California to visit her aunt Kimberley (Megan Mullally).

Without the foresight to charge their phone, let alone phone ahead to inform her aunt of their arrival, the two hitch a ride with another person at the airport (Will Forte), which Olivia insists will work out fine. Along the way to auntie’s house, they realize their chauffeur is on a prescription pill cocktail that may soon turn ugly. So they bolt, walking the rest of the way. Upon their arrival, Nicole’s aunt welcomes them with open arms, doting upon them (a little too graciously for Olivia’s liking), and lets slip that Nicole’s family is on a planned trip without her. Nicole sulks while Olivia is wooed by Aunt Kimberley,  a host for a talent TV reality show called “That Special Something”,  into auditioning for her show. After the two girls have their tarot cards read the next day, Nicole believes she should help Olivia with her audition, turning it into a mixture of her art and Olivia’s monologue.

With faces painted white and adorned in black trash bags, the girls go to the audition to perform in front of the judges, Lance Bass, Christopher Reid, and of course Aunt Kimberley. A strange mixture of spoken word, dialogue, flower backdrop, and projected images, their art piece is hilariously baffling. Afterwards Olivia is upset over her audition as Nicole begins to see the unhealthiness of their co-dependence. The two take their aggressions out on one another and as they begin to change, they have to figure out if their friendship can change with them.

Prediger and Weixler play off one another well and hold a believable friendship. Their jokes, however, aren’t as easily swallowed and while it’s easy to laugh at their naiveté to a certain point, eventually their obtuse and self-centered traits make for a heavier atmosphere than I think they were really going for. Their A-list co-stars handle the satire with far more ease, but are given some questionable character twists. Megan Mullally is fantastic as an oft-drunk washed up starlet, but is also an oddly predatory-like closeted lesbian whose advances on Olivia start out as funny then quickly move to uncomfortable. Jeffrey Tambor equally shines in his small role as the girls’ landlord, but a landlord who happens to be in an on-again off-again relationship with Nicole. They seemed to have aimed for awkward but went flying over their mark.

As a first directorial attempt on both Prediger and Weixler’s part, they’ve fashioned a friendship comedy that relies too much on the love its main characters hold for each other to buy over their audience. The film’s title comes from the tiny dolls Olivia whispers her hopes and troubles to, placing them beneath her pillow to manage her and Nicole’s anxieties. But no doll can save these girls from their troubles, as in the end the girls (and the movie as a whole) seem hardly willing to truly manage their own destinies.

A Teacher is in many ways a reversal of the story that is normally told; featuring an older female authoritative figure (a teacher) having an affair with a younger male (a student). On top of that, the adolescent is more rational and stable than the adult. Hannah Fidell’s first feature is wisely not a public service announcement about some scandalous sexual predator, the affair is consensual and presumably even legal. Having said that, everyone (including the characters) knows that the sexual relationship between a teacher and a student is not morally right, and that taboo is what the film is about.

We follow an attractive high school English teacher named Diana Watts (Lindsay Burdge) through her daily routine which begins with a commute to the school that she teaches at. Because she gets along well with her students, she is as in control of her class as any high school teacher can be. But we come to learn that she does not have that same control of herself. After work Diana meets up with her friend Sophia (Jennifer Prediger) inside a brilliant danger-red illuminated bar, where we find out about her dark side. Diana tells Sophia that she is sort of seeing this guy from school, but what she fails to mention is that it is one of her students. This little nugget of information is exposed in the next scene when she seduces a male student that was seen in her class earlier.

Keeping a secret of this magnitude in a setting such as a high school is as difficult as you imagine it would be. This is especially the case when Eric (Will Brittain) stays behind class and goes in for a risky kiss that any bystander walking by could easily witness. But things get complicated when Diana is roped into chaperoning a school dance where she is forced to watch Eric dance with a classmate. The eerie ambient score in addition to Diana’s deadpan emotions suggest that this pot of boiling water is about to overflow.

While the fate of the characters is obvious from the beginning, the actual cause of Diana’s inner turmoil is for better or worse never explained. Her issues are only hinted at in a brief and cryptic scene early on when her brother mentions their sick mother, which Diana clearly wants nothing to do with. Thus, there is no clear explanation as to what she is running from when she jogs down the street in several scenes of the film. All we know is that she is running away from something, which is equally as intriguing as it is exasperating.

Although Diana puts on smiles and a cheerful attitude at work, she is really hiding behind a dark unraveling breakdown of her sanity. Lindsay Burdge does a great job playing the role of a troubled character who has a wide range of diverse emotions. Aiding in the portrayal of her self-destruction is the shrewd paring of the unnerving score and discomforting visuals found throughout the film.

A Teacher is so brief (only runs 75 minutes) that if feels like there is 20 minutes missing from the beginning of the film. Some people could argue that the narrative lacks due to the relationship already in progress from the start. It becomes clear that the ambiguity was Fidell’s intention when you consider the ending continues with the trend. Whether or not Burdge’s performance and the stunning visuals are enough to carry the intentionally obscure narrative will come down to personal preference.

A Teacher trailer

Alex Karpovsky (most famously known for his work in Lena Dunham’s Girls and Tiny Furniture) plays an (assumedly) extra-neurotic version of himself á la Larry David in Red Flag, a meta dark comedy that’s somehow both navel-gazey and droningly indifferent. The film opens with Karpovsky being unceremoniously booted out of the life (and apartment) of his girlfriend of seven years (Caroline White). With angst and heartache bubbling beneath his Brooklyn-indie button-ups and sweatshirts, we follow him as he tours the Southern states showing his real-life sophomore film, Woodpecker, in tiny arthouse theaters and college campuses, slinging DVD’s for extra cash.

After a routine Q&A, he hooks up with a clingy indie groupie (Jennifer Prediger, playing an obsessive psycho version of Rachel Leigh Cook in She’s All That.) As the tour rolls on, Karpovsky is joined by the Prediger, his old friend (Onur Tukel, who forms a love connection with Prediger), and White, who he’s convinced to give him a second chance (after loads of overly-wordy begging that echoes John Cusack in High Fidelity.) When the truth about Karpovsky and Prediger’s one-night-stand surfaces, the group implodes.

Red Flag had me chuckling through my nose consistently throughout, but not once did it evoke the kind of belly laughs I get from the work of Woody Allen and Larry David (whose humor Karpovsky clearly derives from.) He’s got the right idea, but lacks finesse. Though I struggled to connect with his style of anxiety-fueled humor, he shows clear potential (a naggy phone exchange with his real-life Russian mother is a highlight.)

The film’s running gags—one involving Karpovsky swapping the word “frittata” for “fuck” as an anger-management exercise, and another in which he pleads with hotel managers for a late morning checkout—woefully fall into “diminishing returns” territory. Every time he’d “nerd-rage” on inanimate objects (a frequent occurrence), the triteness of it all would chop my interest down a notch.

The film looks pretty crummy, as drab as the yellow two-star motels Karpovsky and company laze through. It’s difficult to recall any interesting shots, though the cast occupies the screen well; they all have interesting faces and, more importantly, put on fine performances. Tukel in particular kept me engaged with his infectious bearded grin and weirdo optimism. Karpovsky’s 21^st century neurotic nerd shtick (familiar to fans of his work on Girls) feels energy-deprived here. Whenever the film ventures into dark, existential territory it ends up feeling a bit weightless due to Karpovsky’s apathetic delivery. He does, however, hit his stride in scenes where he’s able to vocalize his character’s labyrinthine thought process.

Karpovsky has easy chemistry with his co-stars and the clever dialogue flows naturally, which shows skill—the script is simply a rough outline for the actors to follow and fill in the blanks as they shoot (a system utilized by Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm that affords the actors plenty of breathing room.) Though the premise of Red Flag is meta by nature, at the end of the day it amounts to little more than a decently entertaining yet largely dispensable road trip movie.

Red Flag trailer: