Radha Blank wrote, directed, and stars in this debut feature, a sly, laconic, moving vehicle that hews closely to her actual life. Radha (played by Blank) is a high school theater teacher who at one time was considered a playwright to watch. Pushing 40 and mourning the death of her artist mother, she has just finished her most recent play, Harlem Ave. Well-known producer J. Whitman (a deliciously smarmy Reed Birney) would love to produce it, only as long as certain changes are made, like adding a white character. She is, to say the least, reluctant.

She is also clearly depressed. Her brother leaves messages for her to help him clean out their deceased mom’s place, which she ignores, and she’s burnt out at her job. She spends most of her time with her best friend since high school who is also her agent, Archie (the indispensable Peter Kim). Eventually, he convinces her to accommodate Whitman and rewrite her script in order for it to become her first produced play in years. In the meantime, Radha has rediscovered her first love, rapping, which she did in high school. Desperate to pursue something she feels may be purer and freer than playwriting, she hooks up with D (Oswin Benjamin), a DJ who charges weed for beats.

The Forty-Year-Old-Version is reminiscent of and clearly influenced by the indie cinema of the late 1980s and early ’90s, with its scrappy verve and singular vibe. Blank’s presence is welcoming and knowing, but there’s a sardonic edge to it all. She even occasionally side-glances to the camera as if to say, “Can you believe what I have to deal with.” A gifted comedienne, she seems not so much to throw away her lines so much as to mutter them under her breath. In one of the film’s funniest moments, she attempts to make a grand exit by slamming an automatic door. 

The film is also a satire of the nonprofit theater industry, where Black artists have to make concessions to older rich white patrons, while also taking dead aim at overly serious Black theater companies that center on suffering, personified by a super intense and very funny artistic director played by Andre Ward. These satiric sequences have a lived-in feel, as Blank is indeed a playwright. One striking scene takes place during a rehearsal where Blank has made the requested changes to her script, leaving a Black actress to wonder why her character is the only one speaking in a stereotypical vernacular. Blank doesn’t have a good answer, but both the white director and co-star are eager to chime in.

Eventually what Blank deliberately takes on is the limitations that the entertainment industry put on performers of color, whether in theater or hip-hop. She posits that the gatekeepers don’t allow Black stories to be simply about Black people’s everyday lives. Though Radha has written a play about a young African American couple whose neighborhood grocery store may be forced out of business, Whitman insists she include a white character because “the audience wants to see one of their own,” which is among the many adjustments made to her script

Even her portrayal of the hip-hop world (which Blank is also familiar with) is stripped of any posturing. D, a skinny, quiet guy in his 20s with headphones on half the time and often found eating a bowl of cereal, becomes fascinated with Radha because of her honesty when she raps. At one point, he excoriates his buddies because all they can come up with are diss tracks. They are not telling stories, like Radha is.

However, most of the film focuses on her screwing up, whether it is her decimating personal relationships or, in a particularly hilarious and uncomfortable moment, getting absurdly high before her first public performance as a rapper.

One of the funniest, sharpest, and most charming films of 2020, the movie is yet another love letter to New York City, informed by the street ambiance of Harlem and Brooklyn and wonderfully shot in black-and-white by Eric Branco. His work manages to be both gritty and elegant, which is an apt description of what it’s like to live in New York. The tone is reminiscent of Manhattan and Do the Right Thing and almost as good.