Ada Films,
Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mark Duplass, Mike Birbiglia
Jack (Mark Duplass) is depressed. He’s still mourning the death of his brother and can’t keep to shake it. Jack has been dating his brother’s former girlfriend Iris (Emily Blunt) and needless to say that is quite complicated. Not sure if his relationship is going anywhere and feeling guilty about being attracted to his dead brother’s girl, he’s floundering. Iris is pretty busy, so she sends him to stay at her father’s vacation home on an island. Jack arrives to spend some time alone and get his thoughts together only to learn that Iris’ sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) is also staying at the house. They decide to stay together, knowing nothing will happen, but after many drinks, both are very drunk and they end up in a drunken tryst that complicates things even more. There is much more to the story, but it’s enough to say that the following days are very revealing on everyone’s part as they try to keep the secret, then decide to bring it all out into the open.
This movie was a good bit better than I ever expected it to be. I chose to watch it because I’ve been pretty impressed with Emily Blunt in a string of movies since “The Devil Wears Prada” when I first noticed her as a pretty good actress holding her own with both Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. But this is a whole different type of movie. It’s a character study as each of the characters has ultimate motives that are quite different from each other, and nothing here is simply black and white. There’s a good deal of humor and some really funny moments, but mostly it’s grinding through the truth and confession portion of finding out who each of these people are and what they really stand for. It’s a small movie, with very little change in location, mostly shot in the vacation home on the island, but the characters are the stars. The movie is definitely not boring, and the lack of real action is filled up with self evaluation and a little introspective look at each of the characters. It’s a romantic comedy/drama with good characters, good acting, and a really decent script to work with. No car chases or suspense, unless you count waiting to see if Iris is going to find out or not, but plenty of character development to keep it interesting. I enjoyed this little film.
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