Lawrence has been roped into a spoken-word performance of feminist texts. But
as he reads through his passage during a rehearsal at his apartment, it
dawns on him that this is something he’s desperately uncomfortable doing. At
this moment his girlfriend arrives home, the girl he adores but is not
convinced he actually knows. Something resembling a smirk flits across her
face and the air grows heavy with his discomfort. Lawrence starts to
stutter, desperately trying to avoid the gimlet stare of the writer as he
chokes on her earnest words . . .
With his combination of articulate awkwardness and nerdish cool, the
writer/director/editor/actor Andrew Bujalski comes across like a Woody Allen
for the emo generation. He’s an architect of angst who can magnify the
minute humiliations of daily life into a witty, perceptive and painfully
honest drama.
The 29-year-old plays the terminally gauche Lawrence, one of three central
characters in his second film Mutual Appreciation . He also appeared
in his debut film, Funny Ha Ha ( see review, page 17 ), his lovesick,
clueless Mitchell negotiating the mine-field of wooing a girl who “just
wants to be friends” with such ill-judged persistence that she practically
has to forcibly evict him from her veranda. There’s a lot of comedy mileage
in crippling embarrassment and anxiety.
Allen is just one of the names that critics have come up with while fumbling
to describe Bujalski’s take on modern manners. Manohla Dargis of The New
York Times likened Mutual Appreciation (2005) to “the French New Wave
of the late 1950s and the East Village film scene of the late 1970s”.
Variety lauded Funny Ha Ha (2002) as a “beautifully observant and
wholly unpretentious film with roots more in Cassavetes than Sundance-style
showbiz”.
Bujalski doesn’t thank me for listing the lofty comparisons (others include
Mike Leigh, Jim Jarmusch and Eric Rohmer). “It feels a little silly,” he
says. “Give me a few decades before any of those comparisons are anywhere
near reality.
“You understand where those things come from; when someone has to write a
two-sentence synopsis it’s a lot easier to trot out one of those names. For
the most part, these are all people whose work I have spent a lot of time
with and I’m sure have stolen ideas from. But I bristle at it. I feel that
when I go out and make the film the last thing I’m trying to do is emulate
anyone else’s."
In defence of the references to other directors’ work, the point is not so
much the fleeting similarities that evoke them — the twitchy discomfort that
is pure Allen; the naturalistic performances that recall Leigh — and more
about simply putting Bujalski in the same league. It’s an indication that we
have high hopes of him. So no pressure there, Andrew.
The Boston-born and Harvard-educated film-maker has enjoyed a remarkable
journey with his first feature. Bujalski had no contacts in the film
industry when he made Funny Ha Ha . He did, however, have a group of
talented friends. He wrote the script with his flatmate Kate Dollenmayer in
mind and she heads a nonprofessional cast with a lovely, slightly melancholy
performance. Her character’s quiet crisis speaks to anyone who has graduated
from college only to slam head-on into a giant question mark about what
comes next. Except that, for six months, nobody saw it. “We made that film
in a vacuum,” Bujalski says. “You have this vague notion: it’s a film so
people should see it. But I didn’t know how to get it screened.”
Fortunately, the film started to be shown at festivals around the world and
momentum began to build. Bujalski sold VHS copies from a website. Three
years after the film was completed, an investor came in with enough backing
to allow him to self-distribute Funny Ha Ha in the US. Then the
glowing reviews began piling up.
“I guess the part that was odd is that usually you play those little festivals
and then you’re done. And I kept thinking that would be the case, but for
one reason or another whenever it seemed like the thing had run out of steam
there would be another stroke of luck. And we’re still here talking about it."
The latest lease of life for the film that wouldn’t die is that both Funny
Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation were bought for UK release.
Bujalski is at a loss to explain both films’ longevity, but he’s certain
that the phenomenon is unrepeatable. “I couldn’t do that again if I wanted
to — part of the reason it kept on going is that I had to start from zero.
And that will never be the case again: I’ll never have that great bubble of
naivety again. And a lot of what I do since is try to recreate that bubble.”
Mutual Appreciation is similar in many ways to Funny Ha Ha : both
contain moments of insight in a sea of dead air and uncomfortable silences;
both are punctuated with “ums” and “ers” but then will floor you with the
kind of throwaway articulacy that is all too rare in indie cinema.
But Mutual Appreciation is a more ambitious film and, despite its rough and
ready aesthetic, it is lent a striking beauty by Bujalski’s decision to
shoot in black and white. His reason for the choice: “I thought that the
film was an odd sort of comedy and I thought that black and white was funny.
It’s deadpan.”
He cites Jim Jarmusch’s career as evidence. “[The black and white films] Stranger
than Paradise and Dead Man are funnier than Night on Earth and
Mystery Train . Although there may be other reasons for that.”
So will Bujalski’s movies work for a British audience? He says that he was
always aware that the films he was making were the kind that were meant to
be stumbled over and discovered. He’s right — the feeling you get with these
smart, unassuming pictures is like unexpectedly connecting with a total
stranger, and immediately wanting to hang out with them for every waking
moment. But, as Bujalski succinctly puts it: “How do you mass-market an
accidental discovery?”
We can only hope that enough British audiences stumble over and fall for these
terrific little films to keep the momentum going for a few more years.
Mutual Appreciation will be released on May 4
More men who would be Woody
ZACH BRAFF, the director and star of Garden State The
semi-autobiographical film from the son of therapists makes comedy from
obsessive-compulsive disorder and won the nervy, anxious Braff (previously
best known as the star of the TV series Scrubs ) a fresh legion of fans. His
next film, though, moves away from his own life — he is directing a remake
of the Danish director Susanne Bier’s Dogme drama Open Hearts.
DANIEL BURMAN, the director and star of Lost Embrace and Family
Law The Argentinian Jewish writer/director Burman has been described as
Allen’s natural heir. He has said of the comparisons: “Woody Allen is the
auteur I admire most in American cinema. The big difference is that the
characters in his movies live in apartments that cost at least $2 million,
and their fridges are always full.”
NANNI MORETTI, the director and star of Dear Diary, Aprile and The
Son’s Room Moretti’s self-referential comedies earned him
comparisons with Woody Allen, particularly his wry musing on Rome, mortality
and Jennifer Beals in Dear Diary . Moretti’s more recent work has moved away
from angsty comedy and towards more serious drama and, most recently,
politics ( The Caiman ).
YVAN ATTAL, the director and star of My Wife is an Actress The
Israeli-born Attal appeared opposite his real-life partner Charlotte
Gainsbourg in a film in which he let his neuroses and paranoia run riot.
Gainsbourg, to her credit, took her partner’s onscreen meditations about her
infidelity with apparent good grace.
