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Fresh from college, Hannah drifts from one timid, spineless guy to another. Her break-ups are, like the film, nonchalant, almost deadpan. In between her easygoing banter, Hannah has epiphanies (i.e., no one really listens to each other) that wouldn’t be out of place in a college dorm late at night, with or without stimulants. Prone to self pity, she admits she’s chronically dissatisfied (with life, work, men), but her confession to her roommate that she tends to leave a path of destruction in her wake is more dramatic than anything in the film.
This do-it-your effort, shot in HD, would be nothing without hazel-eyed Greta Gerwig as Hannah, Meg Ryan-cute with a tousled Jean Seberg hairdo. She has more charisma than the film demands. In fact, Gerwig is confined by the camera, as is everyone else, constrained by the limited and simple camera blocking of mostly hand-held static shots of the twenty-somethings lounging about on a futon, in bed, or around a conference table. The cast, which includes indie filmmakers Andrew Bujalski and Kent Osborne, gamely improvise, and their awkwardness is part of the film’s limited charm, but without a clear focus, their interminable ramblings become an acquired taste.
Director Joe Swanberg’s film wallows in its can-do, no-budget, amateurish spirit, best encapsulated by a trumpet duet between Hannah and a coworker, slaughtering the “1812 Overture,” so out of tune that memories of high school band practice will assault you. But no where does Swanberg catch a slice of life. Rather, his scenes are posed vignettes. Visually flat throughout, the workplace scenes lack any sense that there’s actually any work at hand. (Hannah’s on the writing staff for a television sketch comedy series.) Even for a fly-by-night office rental, the office is unusually spartan, like Hannah’s apartment.
The buzz from blogs and early reviews has made too much of the film’s nudity. (If that’s your reason for viewing this, you’ll see more surfing the Web
at home.) But the uninhibited cast is the film’s selling point, which is probably why the film, technically one step above a student film, found a
distribution deal.
Kent Turner
August 22, 2007
