Jim Rash, best known for playing the Dean on Community,along with his years spent at the Groundlings, and that time he won an Oscar with Nat Faxon for writing the screenplay to The Descendants, is making his solo feature directorial debut. He and Faxon broke out and made the excellent The Way Way Back, and followed that up with the not so excellent Downhill.But, Rash proves he still has a lot to give in this film he wrote and directed, which is not adapted from anything.
It does feel so much like a play, like Rash was trying tow rite a new stage show, and then pivoted into a film. Hell, with the way Broadway works, it’ll probably have a better chance now of winding up on stage right next to the new Housemaid musical they are working on.That is because it is so contained. Most of it is in one house, but even aside from that, the majority of the film is set in interior sets. there’s a negligible supporting cast, really only about three people with actual lines, and the whole film is carried by Allison Janney and Andrew Rannells.
Janney plays a woman grieving on her own after the loss of her husband, largely because her son isn’t there. So, instead, his son sends his assistant, Jamie (Rannels) to help in any way possible. This absurdist premise works to great effect as Janney is sizing up Jamie, and how he possibly could be of use to her at this time. Jamie, on the other hand is trying to do exactly what he set out to do. Somewhere in the desolate stretches of New Mexico, these two are going to evolve this alliance into a complicated friendship, full of secrets rising to the surface, and unearthing things better left unsaid.
I would say Janney has never been better, but that is a lie. This role is just so perfectly up her alley, that she knocks it out of the part. Only a handful of actresses can pull off being simultaneously grieving and putting on a brave face that tells the world how much you hate them. She’s not very approachable, but Jamie refuses to let his boss down, and there’s a reason for all of that, which he’ll unpack as the film moves on.
There’s so much here, from the subtext around the death being her son’s stepfather, which revives conversations about her first marriage, and how perhaps his continued estrangement is still out of loyalty to his father.Jamie also brings up some of the things he did learn about her prior to the meeting, one being how great she was when her son came out, something he wished he had more of in his own life. And Rash finds the humor in sadness, using things like a bathroom with no door to add bits of levity, and a reinforced suggestion that this is not an area for small pets like cats and small dogs.
Not to spoil the finale, but it did involve a bit of singing, which both Janney and rannels have done on Broadway, and I kept looking at this one scene thinking their casting couldn’t be an accident, and that Rash was going to let them sing for real. It’s more of that normal person singing, where it isn’t very good, because the person isn’t actually a singer, but we don’t know that they aren’t. There isn’t a missed opportunity for them to sing elsewhere, so what if we actually heard some real singing toward the end.
The audio description was done by Dave Wallace, which had me a little nervous, as he does much better with comedy, but he worked really hard to also land the dramatic tone of the film. It isn’t my favorite audio description of his, but it is also very surprising.
I adore this. I’ll watch it again. Janney is sublime, and Rannels is rarely ever asked to be this honest in a film.
Fresh: 8.7/10
