Josh Reviews Together Together
Together Together was written and directed by Nikole Beckwith. The film tells the story of the unlikely bond that develops between two people, Matt (Ed Helms) and Anna (Patti Harrison). Matt is a lonely forty-something app developer who has decided he wants to have a child, even though he’s not in a relationship. Anna is the twenty-something young woman who agrees to become his surrogate.
I quite enjoyed this film! I was very taken by the film’s amiable, gentle tone, balancing comedic moments with a character study (of Matt and Anna) with depth and nuance.
The film is carried by the strong work of its two leads. Ed Helms is, of course, a well-known comedic performer, and he’s done great work in other funny-serious indie movies like this one. (One of my favorites is his work in Jeff, Who Lives at Home. If you haven’t seen that small film in which he starred along with Jason Segal, it’s well-worth your time to track down!) Sometimes I find that Mr. Helms’ work can get a little too “big” for my tastes, going for the big joke over human believability. But that wasn’t at all the case here. Mr. Helms is very funny, and the film allows Matt to squirm during some awkward moments. But Mr. Helms keeps his performance grounded, and Matt never gets too weird that we can’t continue to have empathy for him as a human being yearning for the next step in his life.
I wasn’t familiar with Patti Harrison before seeing this film, but I’m a big fan of hers now. She’s absolutely terrific as Anna. She’s immediately quirky and endearingly weird when we first meet her, and I enjoyed the way the film and her performance allow us to gradually peel back her character’s layers and allow us to get to know and understand her as the story progresses. As with Ed Helms’ performance, Ms. Harrison allows her character to be strange and unique without going too far so as to make her cartoonishly silly or so awkward she’s off-putting. (Also: Ms. Harrison has an interesting story as a trans actress that I enjoyed learning about after seeing her great work in this film.)
Mr. Helms and Ms. Harrison have great chemistry; their scenes together have a special spark, which is critical for this film to work. (Note: I was a little afraid that the film’s title meant this odd couple would eventually fall into a romantic relationship, which felt it would have been a bridge too far in terms of Hollywood unreality. I’m glad the film didn’t go there.)
Tig Notaro (In a World…) is great as the therapist assigned to work with Anna and Matt. I was delighted to see Rosalind Chao (Keiko O’Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine!) in a small role as Anna’s doctor. Sufe Bradshaw (Sue on Veep!) is a hilarious delight as Anna’s no-nonsense ultrasound technician. Evan Jonigkeit steals every scene he’s in as Anna’s sullen co-worker at the cafe where she works. And Nora Dunn (SNL) and Fred Melamed (who’s also great, along with Tig Notaro, in In a World…) are terrific as Matt’s parents.
The only aspect of this film that didn’t altogether work for me was the ending. STOP READING HERE to avoid spoilers.
Still here? OK, I was very surprised, and not in a great way, by the film’s sudden ending immediately after Anna gives birth. On paper, I understand this idea and why it was appealing to the filmmakers. The whole film has dealt with Anna’s wrestling with the emotional impact of what it will be like for her to carry this baby for nine months — and also to develop a close connection to Matt — only for her to then have to separate from them both immediately after giving birth. This ending was designed to put the audience in Anna’s shoes, in that we’re cut off from these characters and their stories immediately after the birth. That sounds great on paper and, indeed, it’s very effective at allowing the audience to experience that pain that Anna is feeling. But the reality for me as a viewer who had been engaging with these characters and their journeys over the course of the film’s run-time was an unpleasant sensation of having the rug yanked out from under me and the story being left incomplete. Throughout the film, Matt had been assuring Anna that they could still have a friendship even after she gives birth, and I’d thought the journey of these two characters and the connection we’d watched them form over the nine months depicted in the film meant that they had succeeded in forming a connection that could continue after the birth, even though that might be unusual for a surrogate. For the whole film I’d been wondering what would turn out to be the case: Matt’s hopes or Anna’s fears. Not getting even a hint of an answer was unsatisfying. It’s the type of thing that hurts the film’s rewatchability for me. Why would I rewatch this film and go on this journey again, knowing I’ll be left with such an undefined ending? I think the filmmakers chose the pain of the immediate impact of the ending over a conclusion that would have left me wanting to return to this story and these characters. I think that was a mistake.
Despite my disappointment with that final cut to black, I quite enjoyed everything up to that point!
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