Film Review: Some Girl(s) (2013)
Adapted from Neil Labute’s play of the same name by none other than Neil Labute, Some Girl(s) is a pleasant surprise as a “romantic comedy” that paradoxically isn’t romantic, nor comedic. I have “romantic comedy” in quotes because it’s marketed through its poster and trailer as a romantic comedy but it’s actually more like a serious drama with romance as the subject matter. In fact, its very much cut from the same cloth as Labute’s other works, which is to say that while its theatricality and wit gives it a certain lightness, the themes and conflicts of the characters are extremely serious.
However, visually the film does look like a conventional romantic comedy. Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s unobtrusive and classical direction, very rarely moving the camera and covering the scenes in wide shots, and the cinematographer Rachel Morrison’s high-ley lighting, are very much in the romantic comedy mode, balancing out the script’s weighty themes. But, again, there are no laugh-out-loud moments in this movie; and as the story unfolds, the more we learn about the protagonist’s past the darker is the movie rendered.
The story concerns a young writer (played by Adam Brody) about to get married for the first time who takes a tour of cities across the United States revisiting his previous girlfriends from earlier periods in his life. The audience learns through his varied urbane destinations that while he is educated, professionally successful and a member of the cosmopolitan class, his past relationships with women is characterized by a lack of scruples, bordering on abuse. It’s never made clear what the protagonist’s goal is in visiting all of these past flings, but he succeeds with almost all of his visits not in healing old wounds but in reopening them. The only ex-girlfriend he didn’t hurt is the one whose emotional indifference and purely physical interest is mutual. It seems that the protagonist isn’t motivated by a conscience but by a fear of missing out - on what could have been - but by the last frame of the film the audience sees that his interest is not really in examining the past but in any novel romantic encounter. Is Labute saying that this is the default mode for desirable young men? Perhaps, although it would seem that Labute holds the women just as accountable for their questionable relationships with the protagonist as he does the latter. That is, as busy as he is professionally, switching jobs and cities every few years, the main character doesn’t seem to have had any difficulty attracting and seducing women, in fact he seems to attract it even in professional settings where sex is seemingly taboo. (Emily Watson plays a professor he had an affair with in graduate school who gets her revenge, kind of.) And every single one of them agrees to meet with him again in a private hotel room of their own accord. Nonetheless, by the end of the scene with Zoe Kazan’s character the audiences sees that the main character’s disturbing lack of a conscience in his relationships with women has been present since he was a teenager: a natural trait.
The whole film takes place indoors in bedrooms and hotel rooms, and the action is in the emotional interactions between the main character and his amorous interlocutors. The stand-out performance comes from Zoe Kazan who convincingly portrays a character who demonstrates that every interaction of a person’s life has the potential to have a tremendous effect on the consequent lives of those involved, especially if the interaction is romantic in nature.
Some Girl(s) is availabe to view for free on Tubi.
