Filmed at the height of the pandemic, when restrictions were stricter, "There There" consists of six two-character scenes, interrupted by musical interludes, brought to the screen by John Natchez In different home environments (garage, stairwell, kitchen). The Seven Actors -Layla TaylorAnd the Lenny JamesAnd the Annie LagangaAnd the Avi NashAnd the Jason SchwartzmanAnd the Roy NathansonAnd the Molly Gordon- Filmed separately (and filmed remotely by cinematographer Matthias Gronsky on iPhone). But one of them was in the same place at the same time. At any given moment, only one person is on screen. The camera never moves. This unusual process is sometimes interesting, but sometimes it isn't, and loses steam as it progresses.
In the first scene, the unnamed characters of Lily Taylor and Lenny James are lying in bed, overjoyed after a passionate affair. He expresses his desire to see her again. She was put off by his openness, even though she had a good time, too. Suddenly she talks about serial killers and he wonders what happened to the afterglow. In the next scene, Taylor is sitting in a coffee shop with her pastor AA (LaGanga), who listens with annoyance and skepticism as Taylor babbles about her former pastor's New Age-y beliefs. Like a relay race, in the next scene, Laganga meets her son's high school English teacher, the overburdened Molly Gordon (who had barely graduated from high school). Lagang's son has been harassing girls in class, taking videos of skirting, and demanding to know why the teacher has lost control of the classroom. The scene escalates with mutual hostility and there is a high point of "there". It is an emotional confrontation between generations.
In the next scene, a lawyer (Schwartzman) is consulting with his client (Nash), a developer whose platform is under fire for hosting porn (including, presumably, Ibn LaGanga's videos). The next scene shows the insomniac lawyer being "visited" by an apparition from beyond the grave, and in the final scene, Molly Gordon gets drunk in a bar and confronts both the Nash Tech Brothers and Lenny James.
The illusion that these characters are in the same place at the same time never materializes (and probably isn't even supposed to). And the idea that we are broken into bits, even when we're in each other's presence, is on the table, but not explored in particularly interesting ways. Filming limitations lead to scenes that resemble a strange valley version of two people talking. It looks like dialogue but something isn't quite right. The air is dead and flat. There were other films shot in 2020 and 2021, experiments in a form in which the epidemic exists, even if it is just an unspoken threat. Bo BurnhaminsideAnd Radu Jude'sBanging Bad Luck or Loony Porn"It shimmers with a kind of nervous menace and anxiety, the feeling that humanity has reached the edge of the abyss." There "it does not come to life, even as an intellectual or artistic exercise.
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