A somewhat sloppy collection of relationship bits and shrewdly observed comedy of gender differences, the Los Angeles-based Celeste and Jesse Forever, which made its bow at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, marks the screenwriting and leading lady debut of Rashida Jones. A rom-com push that coasts along on the accrued goodwill of its game cast, this low-fi offering is built for the self-identifying embrace of mostly urban indie fans, but marked by a blend of sarcasm and end-game sincerity and life lessons that will strike other viewers as too cloying and calculated by half.
Celeste (Jones) is very career driven, the owner of her own media consulting firm, and the trend-analyzing author of pop culture book Shitgeist. Her best friend and husband Jesse (Andy Samberg), however, is less occupationally inclined. In their 30s, the couple has drifted apart — but only to a degree. Though they’re getting divorced, they still live together in a synchronized domestic routine. Their friends (Ari Graynor, Eric Christian Olsen) find this strange, and off-putting, but Celeste and Jesse swear that it works. Until, of course, it becomes manifestly apparent that it doesn’t. When Jesse breaks the difficult news that he’s gotten another girl (Rebecca Dayan) pregnant, it freaks Celeste out, and forces her to reconsider a decision that she previously found mature and progressive. Are she and Jesse meant to be together, or have they truly outgrown their relationship?
While Samberg is the more well known comedic performer, his presence is a bit of a head feint, for a good bit of the movie’s best comedy is actually bound up in Celeste-as-hot-mess shenanigans, as with Zooey Deschanel in The New Girl. Celeste and Jesse bogs down a bit when it shifts its focus away from the mechanics of its relationship dynamics, and tries to fold in life lessons for its lead character by way of Celeste’s professional acceptance of a troubled pop star (Emma Roberts). This and the film’s other shortcomings, however, are mitigated by the fact that Jones is such a spry and immensely likable performer, as well as the fact that she and co-writer Will McCormack have such great ears for pithy dialogue. It’s a credit to their script that even if the trajectory of its fractured romance feels a bit choppy, the characterizations remain recognizably knowable, and more or less worthy of empathetic investment. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 91 minutes)
Daily Archives: August 1, 2012
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
A compelling documentary that explodes proper and stuffy notions of what a foreign intellectual dissident looks and sounds like, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry offers up a comprehensive snapshot of one of China’s most celebrated contemporary artists, as well as one of its most outspoken critics.
A raconteur to his core, 54-year-old Ai Weiwei is a painter, filmmaker and multimedia artist who has incorporated elements of Andy Warhol’s “factory” approach into his art. After having helped design his country’s iconic Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium, Ai in 2011 became China’s most famous missing person, held in police custody for three months on tax charges and other issues after publicly denouncing the Olympic Games as party propaganda. As an avid Twitterer, Ai drew attention abroad for this sort of commentary, as well as his advocacy on behalf of the more than 5,400 schoolchildren who died as a result of shoddy government construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
As directed by Alison Klayman, Never Sorry effectively walks a razor’s edge between a work of serious sociological inquiry and a somewhat cheeky portrait of a guy whose favorite mode of expression may well be an extended middle finger. Klayman approaches Ai’s private life somewhat gingerly, and with good reason. Though the artist asserts his mother and family life are “not representational” of who he is, it’s clear the truth is a bit more complicated — as evidenced both by the fact that his father, a poet, was denounced by the Anti-Rightist Movement and in 1958 sent to a forced labor camp, but especially the fact that during the course of the movie Ai fathers a son by a woman other than his longtime wife, fellow artist Lu Qing, with whom he shares no children.
Ai, who for a dozen years studied and lived in the United States, seems understandably influenced by his time in the West, but not always in the most direct manner that one might expect. Transparency and accountability inform much of his political agitation, rather than some desire for more naked democratic upheaval. Undertaking projects to cast a light on government deceit and cover-up in the wake of the aforementioned earthquake obviously bring him much scrutiny. And when he confronts a police officer following him the evening before Ai is to testify in the trial of a colleague accused of “inciting subversion of state power,” the officer pacifies his wounded pride by having Ai disturbed during the middle of the night. An assault occurs (off camera), and portions of the rest of the film detail the artist’s filing of various paperwork of formal protest and investigation.
Never Sorry is much enlivened by its lively subject, but it is also an ample, interesting and ruminative showcase on China as a society in flux, simply filtered through the prism of this one man. Creativity and freedom go hand in hand, so the government’s attempts to foster and promote the former while still considerably constraining the latter prove problematic. Nearly 25 years after the tinderbox of the Tiananmen Square protest and subsequent crackdown, there are still faultlines evident. When they will rupture again one cannot say, but Klayman’s movie confirms and captures the currents of change. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sundance Selects, R, 91 minutes)
Will McCormack Talks Celeste and Jesse Forever, More
Plenty of performers take an interest in writing in order to help better craft roles in which they can then star. An excellent example is Rashida Jones, whose screenwriting debut, the Sundance Film Festival-minted Celeste and Jesse Forever, finds her starring opposite Andy Samberg, as one half of a married couple attempting to gracefully transition from coupledom to amicable divorce. With Will McCormack, however, Jones’ writing partner on the project, it’s almost the exact opposite. He’s an actor (he even has a part in the movie, as quirky pot dealer Skillz) comfortably transitioning to life away from the camera. I had a chance to talk to McCormack one-on-one recently, about working with his ex-girlfriend, mock-masturbating tiny cylindrical objects, and his next collaboration with Jones, Frenemy of the State. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.