For Reel

Director: Patrick Brice

The opening scene of The Overnight is a familiar one. A long married couple has awkward, pathetic sex as they try not to disturb their waking child. Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) are squares who are new to California, their romantic life floundering and Alex growing increasingly frustrated by his lack of a social life. Enter Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) and Charlotte (Judith Godrèche), a hipster couple whose loose, carefree lifestyle initially serves as an inspiration before the specific quirks of their relationship start to seem vaguely disconcerting. There’s a nice play regarding the manners of the well-to-do couple–when they are excited to learn that Charlotte is an actress and request to see their work, they have to bite their tongue when Kurt proudly puts on a DVD of his wife involved in a lactation fetish video. Sometimes, writer/director Patrick Brice’s dealings with this sort of “depravity” seems condescending, although as the film goes on it is clear that he has great affection for Kurt and Charlotte as much as he is willing to make a joke of them. As with Lynn Shelton’s Humpday (Mark Duplass is a producer here), it is problematic to bring up the topic of sexuality without having the gull to go all the way with it–the film’s climactic moment is unexpected and touching, but Brice turns it into a gag before having to deal with the fallout. Regardless, The Overnight fares well by putting its central couple in awkward situations where they are forced to consider their own relationship in comparison to their peers’, which is one they are envious and sometimes horrified of.