Shortcomings: Well titled

Shortcomings (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

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.

 

Ben (Justin H. Min) and best friend Alice (Sherry Cola) try to remain unobtrusive while
spying on a mutual acquaintance.

On the other hand, if director Randall Park’s modest little indie is intended to be a comedy, it’s more irritating than amusing.

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.

Enough Said: Whimsical ode to second chances

Enough Said (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for profanity, sexual candor and partial nudity
By Derrick Bang

This is a sweet little dramedy: the gentle saga of two lonely middle-aged people attempting to establish a second act with each other. Despite taking full advantage of its upper-middle-class Los Angeles setting, Nicole Holofcener’s intimate, conversation-laden film easily could be a stage play, where I suspect it might have more success finding an audience.

Albert (James Gandolfini) really isn't ready for a new relationship; neither is Eva (Julia
Louis-Dreyfus). Somehow, though, not being ready together begins to work. Alas, an
unexpected complication is destined to interfere with their growing bond; the question
is whether they can survive the fallout.

Even during these calmer days of early autumn, with the bombastic summer behind us, films such as Enough Said struggle for viewers.

That’s a shame. Far too few movies explore the quiet isolation of late fortysomethings who worry that life has passed them by: that they’re no longer entitled to the happily-ever-after that once seemed an essential clause in the contract of adulthood. In that respect, Holofcener’s film is refreshing merely by its very existence; that it explores this subject with honesty and candor is a bonus.

Holofcener has based her artistic career on serio-comic examinations of modern American women in crisis, starting with 1996’s Walking and Talking, and continuing with Lovely & Amazing (2001), Friends with Money (2006) and Please Give (2010). She clearly has an artistic rapport with Catherine Keener, who starred in all four of those films, and also has a strong presence in this new one.

But Keener takes a supporting role this time; the central character, Eva, is played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a strong TV presence — most famously in Seinfeld, currently in Veep — whose big-screen career has been restricted mostly to voicing characters in animated features. That’s a shame, because her wry, self-deprecating shtick is an ideal defense mechanism for her character here.

(That said, a few of Louis-Dreyfus’ comebacks do sound too much like a stand-up routine; Holofcener could have reined her in just a little bit.)

Eva works as a professional masseuse and has adapted, if reluctantly, to life as a single mother. She remains on reasonably cordial terms with her ex, and has custody of their teenage daughter, Ellen (Tracey Fairaway). We meet Eva during the strenuous routine of an average day, as she schleps her unwieldy portable massage table from one client to the next, obviously deriving no joy from these regular encounters with often self-absorbed people.

But it’s a living, and Eva can take solace from regular contact with best friend Sarah (Toni Collette) and her husband, Will (Ben Falcone). And we sense that Eva has worked hard to derive comfort — if not satisfaction — from her workaday schedule. Unfortunately, that stability is about to be shattered, because Ellen is days away from leaving for college. Eva, her very soul wrapped up in her daughter’s constant companionship, is fraying visibly around the edges.