Together Together (2021)

Directed by: Nikole Beckwith | 90 minutes | comedy | Actors: Patti Harrison, Ed Helms, Rosalind Chao, Timm Sharp, Bianca Lopez, Nora Dunn, Fred Melamed, Vivian Gil, Tig Notaro, Julio Torres, Evan Jonigkeit, Sufe Bradshaw, Travis Coles, Jo Firestone, David Chattam, Heidi Méndez, Ellen Dubin

A man meets a woman, they get a relationship, get married and then have two or three children. That image of a family has, of course, been completely outdated for a while. Because today you have enough families that don’t fit that traditional picture at all. Composite families, children with two fathers or two mothers, single parents. Also in the film world you see more and more ‘newfangled’ family forms. You see a certain tradition creeping in with single-parent families, at least in Hollywood. Because ninety-nine out of a hundred single movie parents are mothers, who have either been abandoned by their husbands or are tragically widowed. Almost always a charming man shows up, for example a new neighbor, helpful colleague or old acquaintance, who turns out to be very nice and at the end of the film they fall into each other’s arms and they lived together with the children for a long time. and happy. Why isn’t that single parent a man for once, filmmaker Nikole Beckwith must have thought. A middle-aged man without a partner – whether he is gay, straight or bi is in fact completely irrelevant – who feels his biological clock ticking and therefore enlists a surrogate mother to fulfill his wish to have children.

With that premise she made the tragicomedy ‘Together Together’ (2021), a film that is perhaps even more about loneliness and the longing for connection than about the pregnancy of surrogate mother Anna (strong breakthrough role by stand-up comedian Patti Harrison). Because both she and the much older Matt (Ed Helms, rarely better), the man who so desperately longs for a baby, have no real contact with the people around them. Matt seems very successful; he has developed an app, a kind of harmless version of Tinder, with which he made a lot of money and bought a beautiful apartment in San Francisco. But the two long relationships he had in his life broke down and he doesn’t always feel valued or respected by his family and friends. Anna is of a very different generation, almost twenty years younger but no less lonely. She also has a difficult relationship with her parents: when she accidentally became pregnant in her last year of high school, her parents demanded that she give the child up for adoption. An event that scarred her for life. She hides behind a wall of sarcasm and doesn’t let anyone get too close. Out of pure self-protection, of course.

At the beginning of the film, Matt and Anna have an introductory meeting. “Have you ever stolen anything?” “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Those kinds of questions. Like they’re on a blind date. Beckwith plays smart with the expectations we have. Because isn’t it true that these kinds of films, about a man and a woman who grow towards each other, always turn out to be romance? Someone like Woody Allen has a patent on it, but Anna delicately puts it in its place in a somewhat perfunctory conversation. No, ‘Together Together’ shows that romance isn’t always necessary to get closer to each other. Because where Anna – who only said ‘yes’ because she wants to use the big bag of money she gets for a new study and thus a completely new start – prefers not to tell anyone about her pregnancy (only if she really no longer hides it? can keep) and just wanting to carry on with what she was doing (including the one night stands), Matt takes her pregnancy extremely seriously. Of course he goes to all medical consultations, comes with brightly colored crocs for extra comfort and brings Anna a daily thermos of pregnancy tea at work. It can be overwhelming at times for Anna, she has to guard her personal boundaries, but slowly but surely she thaws from Matt’s devotion and enthusiasm and sees that, despite the twenty-year age difference, they are more alike than she thought possible. .

Between the more predictable moments – going to pregnancy yoga together, wrestling with a sling, et cetera – Helms and Harrison steal our hearts through their sincerity. Harrison, in particular, whose character is less of an open book than Helms’s, convincingly hints at the world of doubts, insecurities, sadness and tragedy that lie behind Anna’s sober, cynical and self-protective attitude. But there is also an underlying layer seeping through at Helms. Beckwith lets them grow closer, in fits and starts, without adding a perfunctory romance to it, and that may be called brave. Because there will probably be viewers who don’t find the ending completely satisfying, precisely because they are such sympathetic characters that we really started to feel something. Beckwith, however, leaves something behind in the interpretation of the supporting roles, which are admittedly nicely filled in by the actors – the sonographer played by Sufe Bradshaw in a bone-dry way is absolutely hilarious – but have little depth. And there are a few more minor flaws, but on the whole ‘Together Together’ is a modern, fine and subtle tragicomedy with its heart in the right place and with two protagonists who show their best side.