Since this is the Behind the Times Blog, after all, I was ruminating on the films I had seen and the ones that I was sorely disappointed to miss in the theaters. At the top of that list was Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I have heard phenomenal things about. I actually went to see Beasts in the theaters... only to find it sold out and on the last week of its theatrical run where I live. While I'm sad to have to settle for the DVD, I saw another film that day in its place: Celeste and Jesse Forever. It surpassed my expectations, and I've been thinking about some of the similarities between it and one of the few awards season nominees that I have seen at this point: Silver Linings Playbook.
I heard both of these movies described as "romantic comedies" before I saw them, and while this is perhaps the best choice from the limited lexicon of movie genres, it is difficult to lump them in to the same category that generally includes more stereotypical fare. Romantic comedies are generally movies where the central plot line is about the relationship developing between two lead characters, and everyone ends up happy in the end. Even examples in which the ending of the relationship is not so tidy (I'm looking at you, 500 Days of Summer), there's a kind of pink haze over the whole thing that makes it charming, but out of the realm of expectation were these characters meeting in the real world.
Celeste and Jesse Forever and Silver Linings Playbook both move away from this trend, showcasing characters who have strange and imperfect personalities much more like those of actual human beings. I would say that Silver Linings is the darker of the two, but in some ways ends in a more typical fashion, while Celeste and Jesse Forever continues to avoid tying a neat bow on a situation that obviously has too many stray ends to tie up neatly in ninety minutes.
Celeste and Jesse Forever stars Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg as the titular couple, and was written by Jones and her friend Will McCormack, who also has a supporting (and hilarious) role in the film. Roger Ebert noted in his review that perhaps Jones' character and her story arc are so unique and compelling because she decided to write a role for herself. She plays Celeste, a driven career woman who has separated from her husband Jesse, but the two remain best friends and continue to spend considerable time with one another. Samberg and Jones have great chemistry together, and the bond between them is so believable that it's easy to side with their friends, all of whom are urging them to get back together. But this is not that stereotypical romantic comedy. Celeste and Jesse may be soul mates, destined to be in one another's lives, but that does not mean they are meant to be married to one another. The film is a comedy, but it does no shy away from the painfulness of the situation as the pair attempts to figure out how to find balance once they are no longer together.
While Rashida Jones illustrates her misery through some very tragic pantsuits, the central pair in Silver Linings Playbook are even more raw. Bradley Cooper's Pat has just been released from an eight month stay in a mental hospital after an unspecified incident, moving back in with his parents since both his wife and the school where he taught have restraining orders against him. Pat is bipolar and refusing to take his medications; he is determined to "get in shape" and win back his wife, who has no contact with him. A friend introduces him to Tiffany, played wonderfully by Jennifer Lawrence, who has already won a Golden Globe for the role and is nominated for several other awards. Tiffany is a widow, and still wears her wedding ring. While both maintain that they have no romantic interest in each other, Tiffany keeps running into Pat and eventually convinces him to join a dance competition with her.
Lawrence has been compared to the heroines of old screwball comedies in the role, and in some ways she reminded me of Katherine Hepburn's character Susan in Bringing Up Baby. Both Tiffany and Susan find ways to manipulate men who are tied up with other women into spending time with them, and certainly if someone really used a leopard to trap a man into following them into the country, she'd seem just as unstable as Pat and Tiffany. But rather than being a madcap romp, Silver Linings Playbook does not shy away from showing the very real difficulties that Pat and Tiffany face. The film does not attempt to erase their flaws as "quirks" or show them magically disappeared by the closing credits, but instead wonders if the silver lining doesn't come so much in fixing yourself as in finding someone whose broken pieces fit together with yours.
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