Two-handers are a challenge on film, because they often feel like plays that wandered into the wrong medium, losing some of their live-on-stage intensity in the process.
That isn’t an issue when one of the performers is Oscar winner Allison Janney.
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| As time passes, Diane (Allison Janney) and Jamie (Andrew Rannells) learn a lot about each other, including the fact that they're both wounded sparrows. |
Their shared energy is nurtured by writer/director Jim Rash, who grants them a beguiling premise, plenty of tart dialogue, and numerous revelatory exchanges that ramp up the emotional intensity.
We’re dumped into the story without preamble, as Jamie Simms (Rannells) parks in the driveway of an attractive New Mexico suburban home, adjacent to nearby desert land. He drags out luggage for what we assume will be a lengthy stay, knocks on the door, and confronts Diane Patterson (Janney), who doesn’t know him from Adam.
What initially seems like rude hostility actually is a blend of anger, disappointment and crippling grief. She’s mourning her recently deceased husband, whose departure was preceded by a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s. She hoped that her estranged son Tyler would help her handle the necessary details; instead, he sent Jamie, his assistant.
Which, yes, feels coldly insensitive.
Jamie, wide-eyed and inappropriately prepped, visibly shrinks under her withering verbal explosion of dismay. She doesn’t shout or screen — Diane is too refined for that — but Janney employs plenty of perfectly articulated, pent-up spite in order to intimidate her visitor.
“Am I a lot?” she scathingly asks, after pausing for breath.
“No,” Jamie politely lies.
“That’s a shame,” she snaps back, “because I’m trying to be.”
Resignation eventually sets in; Diane does need help, and the solicitous Jamie won’t be cowed into retreat. He explains that Tyler wanted to help, but is hung up waiting to interview a former POW in Khartoum; he has promised to come as soon as he can. Tyler and Jamie text each other relentlessly, which also annoys Diane. (How could it not?)
Jamie notices that Diane seems to be killing the potted succulents that her late husband Henry left behind. (That’ll prompt a smile from gardeners, who know full well that one must work very hard to kill a succulent.)
As the next few days pass, many things become clear, some of them unexpected. Rash’s script parcels out these revelations in measured doses, everything emerging organically. Diane soon finds it liberating to become candid with a total stranger, who offers neither judgment nor expectations. Jamie, by nature inquisitive and respectful, finds her fascinating.
Being alert, shrewd and observant, Diane quickly realizes that Jamie has plenty of his own baggage. His calm sensitivity to her feelings results from having similarly dealt with the passing of both parents not long ago. He’s also gay, as is Tyler, and Diane knows full well that nobody can resist the intensity of her son’s magnetic allure. So she soon asks the obvious questions.
It turns out that Diane and Jamie have one big thing in common: Tyler disappointed both of them, and they’ve yet to fully process how to deal with that.
“I wrote the book on taking the high road,” Diane sighs, at one point.
We’re also pretty sure, long before this detail is clarified, that Tyler has no intention of showing up. (And yes, there’s a reason for that, as well.)
Feeling their way around each other’s open emotional wounds gives the cautiously developing bond between Diane and Tyler plenty of angst to begin with, but she also must contend with the details of Henry’s “exit strategy” ... which is to say, his final wishes. They include two rock anthems to be performed during his service — the Beach Boys’ “God Only Know” and Barry White’s “You’re the First, My Last, My Everything” — which Diane fears won’t fly in the conservative church he’d been attending, during his final years.
Oscar Nuñez briefly appears as the church minister — one of the few times this story ventures outside of Diane’s house — and Bonnie Hunt gets a bit more screen time as Diane’s neighbor, Judith, who also directs the church choir. She’s introduced while searching for her missing chihuahua, whose actual fate is the source of a startled double-take by Jamie when he first steps out of his car (a moment Simms plays for wry humor).
The core premise of Rash’s story comes from personal experience. When his father died after battling Parkinson’s, Rash’s sister — buried under work commitments — sent her assistant to help.
“He was obviously very helpful,” Rash recalled, during a May 29 interview for tvinsider.com, “and I just thought, how interesting to [see this] through his eyes.”
Interesting, indeed.
Rash, Janney and Rannells hold our attention during every moment of this absorbing, thoughtful and captivating 97-minute film. It’s a riveting, tour-de-force blend of sharp writing and nuanced acting.
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