‘Landline’: Infidelity at center of smutty comedy set in mid-90s
Published 1:30 am Thursday, July 27, 2017
Jenny Slate’s opening monologue in “Obvious Child” is the kind of thing that weeds out the uptight among us.
Its indecorous references to bodily emissions and the gunky realities of sex are meant to set up her character as a truth-telling stand-up comic, but also serve notice that the movie itself will take no prisoners when engaging taboos and uncomfortable subjects. Fair enough, as “Obvious Child” is a romantic comedy about abortion.
But I also suspect that “Obvious Child” wants to keep pace with the tone of 21st-century comedy, an explicit style (usually R-rated, as in pictures like “Neighbors” and “Baywatch”) that puts sex and scatology at the crude center of the joke. It’s the comedy of poop and genitalia, the sort of thing that would send Wes Anderson to his fainting couch.
Slate and “Obvious Child” writer-director Gillian Robespierre have reunited for “Landline.” It’s a much less adventurous film than their first collaboration, although the urge to be smutty is still in place.
“Landline” has the outline and the setting of a middle-period Woody Allen picture, as the trials and tribulations of a brainy New York Jewish family provide fodder for bittersweet humor. It’s set in the mid-1990s, when the Woodman himself was still energized enough to produce movies such as “Bullets Over Broadway” and “Deconstructing Harry.”
Robespierre understands that we’re ripe for a little nostalgia about the Clinton era. Setting the action before smartphones became endemic — the title conjures up a simpler time — can be a boon to storytelling.
Infidelity is the central subject in “Landline.” Two sisters, Dana (played by Slate) and Ali (Abby Quinn), discover that their father (John Turturro) has been drafting love poems to a mystery woman. The evidence is right there on floppy discs (the movie treats 20-year-old computer equipment with amused indulgence). Their mother (Edie Falco) appears unaware of this extramarital dalliance.
Dana can hardly be a schoolmarm about this, because her own engagement to yuppie dishrag Ben (Jay Duplass) is threatened by an affair with an old friend (Finn Wittrock). Meanwhile, teenager Ali is acting out a variety of risky behaviors, although never in a way that seriously threatens the movie’s cozy view of everybody eventually getting along.
Turturro and Falco are gifted actors, and their pairing sounds promising because of their different modes: Turturro’s usual style is large and expansive, where Falco tends to offer fine-cut honesty. But they’re given little to play here beyond mid-life disappointment — his literary hopes, her domestic exhaustion.
I wondered whether the script (by Robespierre and Elisabeth Holm) reaches for shock humor because the actual subject matter isn’t particularly fresh. The dirty bits occur in direct relation to how safe the material really is.
In one scene two characters have sex during a screening of a documentary about Nazi atrocities, which on the one hand is a cheeky way for a Jewish character to stick it to Hitler (giving new meaning to the Spike Jones song “In Der Fuerher’s Face”), and on the other hand a blunt tactic to get the audience to drop the popcorn. Let’s just say it lacks the complexity of the “Seinfeld” episode that investigated the propriety of making out during “Schindler’s List.”
“Landline” was a special presentation at SIFF earlier this year, and is poised to follow SIFF opener “The Big Sick” as an indie with breakout potential. Both films are distributed by Amazon Studios, which is demonstrating increasing savvy about how to pick ‘em; Amazon’s 2016 summer releases included “The Neon Demon” and “Wiener Dog,” two non-crowd-pleasers — any random five minutes of which had more authentic shock value than the entirety of “Landline.”
I laughed during “Landline,” and I still think Jenny Slate is a deft, new kind of comic actress. But the journey from the spikiness of “Obvious Child” to the softness of “Landline” is a disappointing arc, no matter how far this film might brings its creators into the mainstream.
“Landline” (2 stars)
The “Obvious Child” team of director Gillian Robespierre and actress Jenny Slate reunite for this comedy of infidelity, set in New York in the mid-1990s. Much less adventurous than their first feature, this one settles for some cozy observations, albeit with plenty of poop and sex jokes mixed in. With John Turturro and Edie Falco.
Rating: R, for language
Opening Friday: SIFF Cinema Uptown
