Note: The writer of this review has followed Together together on a digital screen from home. Before making the decision to see it – or any other film – in a cinema, please consider the health risks involved. There it is an interview with scientific experts.
There is a stutter about binge-watching friendship in sweet, kind, slightly subversive indie comedy Together together. It’s not a knee, exactly – the film uses a primetime phenomenon from the 90’s, which became a shortcut to basic pop the taste of culture as an easy way to bridge the generational gap between two people approaching. Intentionally or unintentionally, the joke emphasizes to the greatest extent that the writer-director Nikole Beckwith goes sitcom territory, while surrounding the platitudes of the shows, more formulated than the NBC mega-hit. Maybe, in the end, it’s just an exceptionally simple way to telegraph what Together together is really about: This is a portrait of strictly platonic love – of strangers who become friends, sometimes while watching friendship.
The main characters are completely foreign at first. We meet them as they meet. Matt (Ed Helms), a San Francisco app designer, is 45 years old and single and looking to have a baby. Anna (Patti Harrison), the barista she was interviewing, is 26 years old and is single and asks to be her gestational surrogate. Anna had a child when she was still in high school and adopted him. Many of the women who go through this process have raised a child, Matt remarked during their initial conversation. But why should that matter, Anna politely contradicts herself – if she knows anything, she knows what it’s like to have a child she won’t keep. However, as a middle-aged bachelor, Matt doesn’t quite fit in with the usual surrogate profile. He is alone, while Anna faints and then consciously returns during their meeting …cringe – a sharp opening scene, which sets the awkward tone and effectively establishes the dynamics between the two.
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For a while, everything is stingy social discomfort. Early interactions distort, as Matt nervously proves dominant in monitoring Ana’s diet and sex life, the dialogue landing directly in the desk the star’s comfort zone, small talk and passive aggression. But as these solitaires relax, the film does, also. Together together it’s almost double how often Matt and Anna are alone in the frame, renegotiating the limits of a relationship that is intimate and professional and starting to take on the shape of something more. They develop a warm relationship, strengthened by the chemistry between two actors who jump at the opportunity to deepen them. Resumes. Harrison, a fistful of trustline device on the small screen (it I think you should leave sketch is unforgettable), violates the vulnerability between the cracks of her sec. And Helms grabs his brilliant signature routine, surprisingly affecting (and holding back) the effect. They pair nicely, these comedians in the moonlight.
The relationship never threatens to become a love story. Actually, Together together no doubt overcomes the viewer’s concerns about this possibility, with a discussion of age-appropriate encounters with Woody Allen. (If the film’s font choices, cozy cafe backgrounds, and abundance of big-city chitchats vaguely recall the brand of the embarrassed director’s talking romantic comedy, Anna’s withering critique of her classics works loudly to assure everyone that Beckwith isn’t a fan). When Matt and Anna finally say “L“Word is a moving and almost accidental expression of non-amorous communion. The film delicately ignores expectations in other respects as well. There is no exhibition scene to explain why Matt did not find someone, why he is ready to start parenting as a single father. And as it finally becomes clear, the danger of separation anxiety that appears on the film has nothing to do with the growth of the baby inside Anna; it is the imminent probability that the due date will also be an expiration date for the unexpected relationship he made with the father.
This is what is ultimately exciting and even a little complicated about this Sundance selection: it is an ode to how even impermanent relationships can be deeply meaningful. Together together it falters only when it creates an unwanted continuity between its own seriocomic material and the 10 seasons of networking, Matt and Anna, go through three quarters. The edges of the film are completed with a series of funny people – Tig Notaro! Fred Melamed! Nora Dunn! Sufe Bradshaw! – and yet they all seem to occupy an easier comic universe, which periodically tilts the story towards incident sitcomish and improvise games. We almost feel like deck stacks, designed to make us crave the moments that simply leave us the hero and heroine in one scene, without any strong comic reserve to distract them from the flourishing of their genre X compatibility. -millennial. But maybe this is the essence of how we make deep, truly life-changing friendships: When you’re with the one you love platonic, the rest of the world is just on the way.