[rating=5.00]
Modern dating certainly gives ample opportunity to mine for comedy. With the rise of dating and hook up sites, the waters are certainly strange these days, especially if you’ve been out of the game for a few years. What’s appropriate? What’s not? Can a swipe in either direction really determine your romantic future? What percentage match is good enough to warrant a message? (Sounds complicated, glad I’m married.)
Wobble Palace, the new film from indie director Eugene Kotlyarenko (A Wonderful Cloud) attempts to explore these new intricacies in dating, though its effectiveness is debatable. The script (also written by Kotlyarenko) oscillates back and forth from quirky and charming to on the nose, sometimes in the same scene. Its ups and downs make it a difficult film to enjoy, even if, ultimately, it’s more charming than not.
The film follows the misadventures of couple Jane (Dasha Nekrasova) and Eugene (Kotlyarenko) as they begin to realize that they’re just not going to work out. As an experiment in independence, the two agree to split their house for the weekend, with each giving the other space to explore the waters of singlehood for the first time in four years.
That’s a shallow approach to the end of the relationship and suggests that neither Jane nor Eugene are currently capable of the emotional intelligence one needs to maintain any relationship, not just their own. Maybe that’s the point? For all it’s cute and quirky charms, there is a considerable lack of focus in Kotlyarenko’s script that makes it hard to determine what, exactly, this film is going for.
Is it a satire about modern dating? A scathing critique of the shallowness of millennial culture? A heartbreaking character study about two people on the edge? It’s all at once all of these things and, somehow, none of them. Oh sure, it has its moments of hilarity and heartbreak, but neither character is likeable or relatable in any meaningful way, which makes it harder to give any sort of shit about their will they-won’t they relationship or bizarre character foibles.
That said, when the film is hitting it really hits. Both Nekrasova and Kotlyarenko are given great moments to work with, and they are, in their own ways, perfectly suited for the laidback, pseudo-mumblecore aesthetics of Wobble Palace. Structurally, the film is interesting, with the script giving new tidbits of information in its anachronistic telling, leading to a brilliant, emotional moment at the film’s climax.
In the end though, it felt like a bit too little and a lot too late. Wobble Palace is not a bad film, but it’s an utterly basic one. It may be good for a couple of laughs, but it’ll never be worth hitting up for a second time around.
One Response
makes its hard to determine what
— you need a proofreader bb