The Baltimorons (dir. Jay Duplass)
The main point of comparison I’ve been seeing for The Baltimorons are Linklater’s Sunrise/Sunset movies, in which two people, through unplanned circumstances, end up spending a day together and reaching some profound truth about life, love, and themselves. Welp, it’s time to come clean about my cinephile bonafides: I’ve never seen those movies. I’ve always wanted to (and I’m pretty sure I own the DVDs from back when I could buy things without the risk of going completely broke), but I’ve just never been in the mood. I’ll get to it, I promise. One day.
And it’s in this way that I feel a kinship with the protagonist of Jay Duplass’ hilarious, and surprisingly touching new film.
His name is Cliff (Michael Strassner, who cowrote the film alongside Duplass), and he’s six months sober. He and his girlfriend-I-mean-fiancée are en route to her mother’s house for Christmas dinner when a loose porch brick leads to disaster. With a busted tooth and limited options, Cliff must bail on dinner to visit the one dentist who is open on Christmas Eve. Dr. Didi (Liz Larsen) has some family issues of her own, but she’s sure as shit not going to talk about them with her bumbling new patient. Unless, of course, circumstances put these two lost souls into an adventure together – one where they may reach some profound truth about life, love, and themselves.
Being a Duplass film, The Baltimorons exists in a mumblecore space, but one that is much more quickly paced in terms of the humor. The laughs are pretty much non-stop, mostly on account of Cliff’s inability to “turn it off.” Yet there’s a pathos behind his humor, and it speaks to a notion I know all too well: hiding emotions behind comedy, lest I become someone else’s problem, which is in turn based in the very millennial notion of “I’ll get to it when I get to it.” Like me and the Sunrise/Sunset films.
The relatable millennial malaise seeps out of every frame, and it’s matched with the ennui of Didi’s younger boomer experience. Namely, she’s financially okay, but isn’t emotionally thriving. With her material stability and Cliff’s emotional instability, it’s no surprise that what begins as a series of turbulent mishaps soon evolves into a well-motivated May-December romance. It also functions as one of few “Baltimore movies” that isn’t at all about crime.
The Baltimorons was a late addition to the SpringFest lineup, and it’s one I was ready to dismiss as “I liked it well enough,” but I found myself tremendously moved, teary-eyed, and exhausted from consistent laughter on a Sunday morning. A nice surprise indeed.
And let it be noted that I will be keeping my eyes open for more work from Liz Larsen. I had never heard of her before, and she low key delivers one of the best, most complex performances of the year.
The Ugly Stepsister (dir. Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt)
Following in the footsteps of The Substance into the sub-subgenre of body image horror, The Ugly Stepsister provides yet another retelling of the classic Cinderella tale. It’s a story that’s been altered and retold in many ways, and this version smartly chooses to center one of the “evil” stepsisters as the protagonist. By drawing from some of the more gruesome iterations of the story (and adding plenty of original squirmable moments to it) Blichfeldt’s masterfully orchestrated drama has the ability to reacquaint even the most iron-stomached viewer with their lunch.
You know the story: there’s a prince coming to town for a ball, and all the local ladies want their opportunity to be selected as his lover (and to access his tremendous wealth). The obvious selection is the gorgeous Agnes, who has no interest in the prince, nor in the gold-digging aspirations of her recently widowed stepmother. Said stepmother wishes for her own daughter Elvira (Lea Myren) to win the prince’s hand. Unfortunately, Elvira is not the most conventionally attractive of the bunch. But quite fortunately (a relative term), there are ways to enhance one’s physical beauty, most of which are rather primitive surgeries and medicines. Beauty, as they say, is pain.
What makes this film so compelling is that despite her ultimately ruthless desire for physical perfection, Elvira begins as an empathetic protagonist. So often the stepsisters in this classic fairy tale are depicted as avaricious clowns who will stop at nothing to get what they want, but in this version, Elvira, at least at the outset, is a victim of culture and circumstance. She just wants to do right by her mother, who herself, as rotten as she proves to be, is in some way motivated by a world where women are meant to be pretty babymakers and nothing more. But by the film’s final reel, Evlira’s plight becomes the most stomach-churning depiction of the sunken cost fallacy imaginable.
So even if you’ve seen this story countless times before, you’ve definitely not seen it quite this way. Visually, too, the film excels. From the costumes to the set design to the color palette, there’s a richness to the production that many of these “doomed to find an audience in streaming” movies tend to lack. The Ugly Stepsister demands to be seen on the big screen, preferably with a crowd to gasp, laugh, and squirm along with.
Stay until the end of the credits. There’s an additional gag that’s not to be missed.
