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.)
