If this film’s depiction of millennial relationships reflects reality, I fear for the future of the human race.
They’ll never stop navel gazing long enough to procreate.
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| Ben (Justin H. Min) and best friend Alice (Sherry Cola) try to remain unobtrusive while spying on a mutual acquaintance. |
Adrian Tomine’s script, adapted from his 2007 graphic novel of the same title, focuses on Ben (Justin H. Min), a Berkeley-based, thirtysomething Asian-American plagued by life and career uncertainty. He hopes to become a filmmaker, but that isn’t going anywhere; he earns spending money by managing the Berkeley Arts Cinema, an indie movie theater with more staff than patrons.
In a word, Ben is a jerk: self-absorbed, condescending and stridently arrogant.
He lives with longtime girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) in a nice apartment funded by her parents; she works for a local Asian American film festival. They squabble a lot, in part because of his roving eye and obsession with blonde women (“white girls,” as Miko complains). Her annoyance is reasonable, but their arguments — about that, and a variety of nit-picky nothings — always devolve into second-guessing, defensive self-justification and needlessly philosophical asides.
Frankly, they’re both tiresome.
Ben fills much of his down time by watching Criterion Collection DVDs and hanging out with best friend Alice (Sherry Cola), a queer grad student who loves hooking up but seems unable to make a relationship last. Even so, she’s quite happy with her own self: at ease in a way that Ben couldn’t even imagine.
Alice also gets the film’s best lines, which Cola delivers with aplomb. My favorite: “Just because I’m a hypocrite, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Although clearly unhappy and dissatisfied, Ben seems incapable of change. It’s forced upon him abruptly, when Miko accepts an internship in New York. She practically vanishes overnight, while magnanimously allowing him to continue living in their apartment. (One wonders what her parents think of that.)
Suddenly “free,” Ben now is in a position to explore what he thinks he wants … starting with Autumn (Tavi Gevinson), the blonde recently hired to work at his movie theater. She’s a performance artist, although that latter word must be taken with a grain of salt; her notion of “art” is eye-rollingly outré.
Later to come: the bisexual Sasha (Debby Ryan), currently between relationships.
