The Best And Worst Of The 2016 Sydney Film Festival, Reviewed
Sorry, the movie about Daniel Radcliffe's farting corpse is a bit of a stinker.
The Film That’ll Charm You (Possibly Against Your Will)
Maggie’s Plan, dir. Rebecca Miller
Starring: Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore, Ethan Hawke, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph
Reviewed by: Tom Clift
Towards the end of Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan, Greta Gerwig’s protagonist is described in the following way: “You’re a funny person. There’s something very pure about you — and a little bit stupid. Yet I can’t help it. I like you.”
It’s an apt assessment, not just of Maggie, but of roughly half the roles on Gerwig’s IMDb page. Between Frances Ha, Lola Versus, Mistress America and now this, the actress has cornered the market on talky indie comedies about flighty young women living in New York. You’d be hard-pressed to say she’s stretching herself with parts like these, and at some point her shtick will probably get old. Still, after grinning like an idiot the whole way through Maggie’s Plan, I can tell you that that day is yet to come.
Like many of the films in which Gerwig finds herself starring, Maggie’s Plan is basically a hipsterised version of a classic screwball comedy. In this particular case, the narrative catalyst is an affair, between university careers advisor Maggie (Gerwig) and anthropology professor John (Ethan Hawke), at the cost of the latter’s marriage to the brilliant but intimidating Georgette (Julianne Moore). There’s a lot more to the story than that, but I won’t reveal it here — since one of the true joys of the Maggie’s Plan is the unexpected place it ends up heading.
With snappy dialogue aplenty, the work of the cast is paramount, and thankfully the whole team knocks it out of the park. Gerwig, as I’ve mentioned, could play this part in her sleep, while Hawke provides a vulnerable, hangdog quality that helps John come off as less unlikable than he would have otherwise. Still, it’s Moore who proves Miller’s most valuable player. While Gerwig can perhaps be accused of trotting out the same performance over and over again, the same thing could never be said of her co-star. With a ridiculous Danish accent and perfect comic timing, Moore is hysterical in every scene she’s in, while at the same time bringing dimension to a character who, in lesser hands, would have been little more than a mean-spirited cartoon.
For fans of: Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore’s character in The Big Lebowski, watching Woody Allen movies without conflicting politics.
Opening in Australia: July 7
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