Throughout September, Friday nights are dedicated to cool, small American indie films that you wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity to see. This week catch the crowd pleaser Unexpected and over the coming weeks, keep an eye out for Kristen Wiig in Nasty Baby, and Christopher Abbott in James White.
Unexpected premieres Friday 9th September, 8.30pm
Unexpected is the sweet story of a teacher Samantha (Cobie Smulders) who accidentally gets pregnant at the same time as one of her students Jasmine (Gail Bean). Their backgrounds and situations couldn’t be more different, but the two bond over pregnancy yoga classes, and Samantha makes it her mission to get Jasmine into college.
Unexpected isn’t going to blow you away, but it’s a smart and relevant piece of storytelling, and a real crowd pleaser. The film, directed and co-written by Kris Swanberg, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015, and will resonate with any woman who has had to contemplate the effect of motherhood on their life. The film reminds us that experiences and expectations of motherhood are all different, and there’s no one way of going about it; a white, financially secure, educated, married woman is just as unprepared for motherhood as an African American, financially insecure, single teenager.
Kris Swanberg, who is married to mumblecore filmmaker Joe Swanberg, creates a warm and accessible film in which her lead actors can shine. Smulders’ reminds me a touch of actress Lake Bell, and young actress Gail Bean is superb, marking her as an actress to watch. Unexpected is a perfectly pleasant way to end the week.
Queen of Earth premieres Saturday 10th September, 8.30pm
Queen of Earth is the work of Alex Ross Perry, an exciting young American filmmaker, who is often associated with the mumblecore movement due to the fact he makes films on tiny budgets. However, unlike his mumblecore colleagues who like to improvise off loose ideas, Perry’s scripts are sharp and filled with scripted acidic observations that garner him comparisons to Philip Roth, Whit Stillman or Noah Baumbach.
Queen of Earth stars Elisabeth Moss and Inherent Vice star Katherine Waterston, and both are excellent. Moss plays Catherine, a young woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown after her father dies and her boyfriend leaves her. Her old friend Virginia (Waterston), with whom she has been estranged, takes her to her family’s lake house to recoup and recover, but Catherine’s mental state continues to decline.
Catherine and Virginia’s friendship is horrible; they pride themselves on pushing each other’s buttons and spitting out brutally honest barbs to see how much the other can bear. Turns out quite a bit – and yet it all creates a level of tension and unpredictability that is hard for us to bear.
His latest couple of films, Listen Up Philip and Queen Of Earth have made world premieres at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival respectively, and even though he’s yet to have a breakthrough moment at the box office, Alex Ross Perry’s work is not to be missed.