Landline (Gillian Robespierre)

[number8]

IMDB

[number8]

Very funny, I laughed constantly, but not much else going on in it. There's a sort of continuation of her approach in Obvious Child (where it's a traditional sweet-hearted romcom that treats abortion as just a chapter in a love story) in that this is a family comedy that's similarly casual about people's desire to cheat on their loved ones. It's just as determined as Robespierre's first film in normalizing life's mistakes, but it's lacking the clarity of that contrast that was present in Obvious Child, maybe because since this is about a family it has more character arcs to follow and they don't share the run time very well. The film feels really episodic.

I'm also undecided if it should be a point against the film that it never even attempts to justify its chosen period setting. Is setting stories arbitrarily 20-30 years in the past just something we do now for flavor, even when the era is not being commented on or referenced at all? I was expecting the film to channel at least some kind of '90s vibe and banter, but it never does. All the interactions feel very of-the-present.

Jenny Slate, though. Oh man, she's the best.