Movie Review Life Partners

Life Partners (2014) 

Directed by Susanna Fogel 

Written Joni Lefkowitz, Susanna Fogel 

Starring Gillian Jacobs, Adam Brody, Leighton Meester, Greer Grammer, Gabourey Sidibe 

Release Date December 5th, 2014

Published December 25th, 2014

Making room in life for our people's people is not an easy thing. No man has lived without the experience of the girlfriend or even wife of the long time friend who's intrusion into their life is among the most significant disruptions in their life. When my best friend got married he was already moved away and living apart from me which actually made the transition in our lives easier. His wife and I are Facebook friends and get along splendidly on holidays. 

Other friends have married and the transition has been bumpy, awkward and on more than one occasion the friendship simply vanished. The thoughtful, funny new movie "Life Partners" is about a significant life-interruptus moment for a pair of female friends whose co-dependency was a defining trait. 

Sasha (Leighton Meester) and Paige (Gillian Jacobs) are the kind of friends who are announced as one person upon their arrival, as if Sasha's last name were And-Paige. They have jokes so deeply inside that to introduce them to others is to mystify them further. Take their obsession with the pop institution known as "Top Model." I doubt 'Model' host Tyra Banks could keep up with the stream of giggling asides Sasha and Paige cram into just a couple of scenes. 

So, when Paige meets and hits it off with Tim (Adam Brody) we know Sasha is about to take a serious loss. Tim is affable and has a good map for Paige's weirdness in the same way Sasha does; turning them, naturally, into competitors for Paige's attention. Of course, Tim is going to win; the plot has kicked in before the end of the first act and we know that the subject of the film is how we deal with our friend's new friends. How Sasha comes to cope with Tim while forging her own new bonds and longing for her bond with Paige is how the story will play out. 

That Sasha also happens to be a lesbian is surprisingly unimportant. Just ten years ago a filmmaker would be forced by convention to play on a secret longing Sasha has for her best friend to also become her lover. Here however, we have not a boundary breaking movie but rather a movie that is knowledgeable enough and modern enough not to bother with such old school thinking. Sure, it comes up, but only in a bitter, thoughtless tirade from an angry supporting player. 

No, director and co-writer Susanna Fogel is forward thinking enough not to waste time with the sexual politics and focus on two friends growing up, growing apart and growing together again. Maturity comes from learning that you aren't the center of everyone's world and that your people's people are also the star of their own story and not a supporting player for your wants and needs. It's only when Sasha stops seeing Tim as the villain in her story that she can mature and move on and make her way forward with Paige as two adult friends. 

I've been waiting for a movie like this for a long time. I've often wondered when someone might tell a story about friends and friends of friends that isn't some vacuous series of dinner party conversations or some trifling mumblecore B.S masquerading hipster ideas of friendship as deep insights. "Life Partners" is a movie for people struggling to grow up and then finally, actually growing the fuck up. What a refreshing notion. 

Movie Review Precioius Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009) 

Directed by Lee Daniels

Written by Geoffrey S. Fletcher 

Starring Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz

Release Date November 6th, 2009

Published November 5th, 2009

The last time I had a feeling like this was after watching the 9/11 movie United 93. That film left me with a mixture of awe and emptiness. On the one hand it is a remarkable film. On the other hand I could not imagine recommending the experience to anyone. People-watching the day the film was released; as audiences lined up with pop and popcorn in hand was a surreal and dispiriting experience. How could anyone eat popcorn while watching an accurate recreation of the horror of 9/11?

Precious left me with that same empty sadness. Do I appreciate aspects of the film? Yes, the acting in Precious is top notch. The problem is an overwhelming sadness and sense of despair that suffocates while the movie plays and lingers afterward. Like United 93, regardless of what's good about Precious, how can I recommend it?

At just 16 years old Clarice 'Precious' Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is pregnant with her second child. Both children are born of rape; rape by Precious's own father, an abuse witnessed by her mother Mary (Mo'nique). Precious deals with these horrors by escaping into fantasies of fame where she walks the Hollywood red carpet with her light skinned boyfriend.

At school Precious can hardly read. She has like far too many American students been passed along by a system ill-equipped to deal with her level of trauma, abuse and an almost genetic trait of ignorance and despair. When she finally arrives at an alternative school, where she belonged all along, it's almost too late.

At this new school Precious finds uncommon kindness from her new teacher Ms. Rain (Paula Patton) and acceptance from her fellow alternative school classmates. Ms. Rain, like anyone else, is incapable of dealing with the Jovian hills heaped upon poor Precious but unlike so many others; she doesn't try and pass the buck. The film gets its most painful, emotional moments out of Precious and Ms. Rain's scenes.

Outside of the scenes between the newcomer Ms. Sidibe and Ms. Patton, Precious plays like a horror film with Mo'nique as a strange sort of villain who begs for our sympathy in the end for the horrors she brings, an Eli Roth ‘Hostel’ villain but with scruples. There is nothing wrong with Mo'nique's performance, it is effective and memorable, the issue is the amount of her time spent committing heinous abuse.

I understand wanting to demonstrate what Precious is up against but the repeated horrors contribute to a suffocating air of depression that does not allow audiences to feel anything else. Do you sympathize with Precious? I guess, but not in the way I'm sure is intended.

Precious is meant to elicit our sympathy and like a victim in a horror movie she has our sympathy on a basic human level. Once the horrors are piled on our sympathies deepen because Ms. Sidibe is a fine actress, but at a certain point the sadness, indignity and despair suffocate any and all feelings other than severe depression. I'm not saying lighten up, I'm saying there has to be a more effective way of making the point about Precious's circumstances than bludgeoning the audience with sorrow.  

I think the point that director Lee Daniels is trying to make in Precious is that there are girls like Precious out there and something needs to be done about it. That is an unquestionable fact. However, the movie is far from the most effective tool for doing something about it. The series of horrors depicted in Precious will not send audiences home with thoughts about fighting poverty and abuse; rather they will want to rid themselves of the experience of so much forlornness and melancholy.