The Cinematheque

“Perceptive, abrasive, and frequently acerbically funny… One of those films in which very little concrete happens, but the tingling possibility that something might makes it compelling.”

Wendy Ide, Screen International

Canadian writer-director Kazik Radwanski follows up his breakthrough feature Anne at 13,000 ft with this piercing and disarmingly playful will-they-won’t‑they drama, selected for Berlin’s excellent (and regrettably short-lived) Encounters platform. Reuniting Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson, whose easy chemistry in Anne carries over to this similarly Toronto-set picture, Radwanski’s naturalistic two-hander observes the collision of formerly inseparable university friends whose paths have diverged since graduating. Mara (Campbell) is a creative-writing professor and married mom settling into life sans literary success. Matt (Johnson) is an ​“edgy” author whose modest slice of celebrity has delivered him to New York. When Matt parachutes into Mara’s orbit unannounced, the closeness between them resumes with intoxicating ease—then threatens to cross a line. Though marked by a looser, more comic register for Radwanski, the film is anything but flippant about its characters’ emotions, in which jealousies of the heart and trade entangle in awkwardly truthful ways.

“Likely to strike a chord with anyone who’s ever contemplated the seven-year itch … The naturalistic camerawork and performances ground the film in realism, creating a wry dramedy that refuses to placate us with easy answers or condescension.”

Hannah Strong, Little White Lies

“One of the year’s best films.”

Siddhant Adlakha, IndieWire