The Dish & the Spoon

I wanted to like this picture (brave little independent film launches out into the big world at London Film Festival), and it has a striking opening sequence. Unfortunately, by the halfway point it started to feel laboured; by the end, fatally, the characters had become annoying rather than sympathetic, and the whole thing came across with an amateurish feeling.

It feels too long for its actual content: too many would-be-meaningful shots of driving, of landscape, of the camera looking at characters, of characters looking at each other, of 'oh-look-I-managed-to-catch-a-flock-of-birds-in-the-viewfinder' (this happens several times, and while it's a pretty composition and no doubt a challenging achievement, it doesn't really do anything for the film as a whole). And it needs a better script -- it sounded a lot of the time as if the characters were improvising their dialogue as they went along, and there is little coherent plot. The film manages to give the overall impression of someone's Film Studies degree project material expanded to feature length, not always successfully.

Perhaps the most frustrating scene is where the central pair, for no reason that ever becomes apparent, act out a scenario that involves the woman, dressed in man's clothing, performing a sexually aggressive pick-up on the young man, tricked out in make-up, a necklace and a padded bra -- like so much of the rest of the film, this scene doesn't go anywhere plot-wise, and I just got the impression that the director thought it would be a fun thing to get the actors to do. It's certainly confusing for the audience. (I was actually wondering at one point if we had been subjected to an artful piece of misdirection, and that the unfaithful spouse was actually being revealed as a partner in a lesbian relationship -- but apparently not.)

"The Dish and the Spoon" (again, why this title?) starts off with an interesting premise (and some jaw-dropping ranting on the part of Greta Gerwig), but gradually lost this viewer's engagement. This sort of free-flowing improvisational stuff really isn't in my line: your average B-movie would squeeze in six or seven times the plot and far more dialogue into two-thirds of the running time of this picture.

Apparently it's 'mumblecore', 'wacky', 'quirky'. It isn't me.

Rose (Greta Gerwig) is outraged over her husband's affair with yoga teacher Emma. She picks up an English boy (Olly Alexander) in distress. He had come to America for a girl which ended in disappointment. The two have an uncomfortable time as they set to confront Emma.

I wonder how young exactly is the boy supposed to be. Olly is twenty and there is no reason why he wouldn't jump all over Gerwig which makes the early hesitation rather silly. All of it depends on his age in the movie and I may have missed that. Since he doesn't even have a name, it's not unrealistic that he has no age. There is a big emotional scene from Gerwig which surprised and shocked me. Then there is the ending which is unearned since the audience knows so little about the husband. We can't forgive him if we don't know him. It's a missed opportunity for the boy which is how I feel about this movie.

I enjoyed this movie, as it does not feel constructed in the way most movies are. It makes you feel the way you would feel if you were in Rose's shoes, overwhelmed by emotions and with no idea what you are going to do next. Enslaved by pain and bored by the lulls in between when she does not know what to do and acts without thinking. For me this movie feels totally realistic and true. Of course some scenes make no logical sense, but we are all a bit illogical especially when hurting. Still they are interesting to watch as other lives not our own seem more interesting sometimes. There are moments of profound truth and emotional release that are very impressively acted and filmed and make the movie totally worth watching. Don't expect a masterpiece, a precious gem, but a nice round pebble smoothed by the sea.

I watched this film bc the end credit song popped up on my Spotify and I love it sm :") unfortunately, I can't say the same for the film. It's not BAD, it just doesn't have enough happen to keep it interesting or for the performances themselves to carry the film w.o a stronger plot. Mainly there's just a lot of uncomfortability within it; Greta's character is so believable and unpleasant when she gets angry I genuinely just didn't want to watch, as well as her relationship with the Boy also felt more uncomfortable to watch than sweet, and I kind of just felt bad for him bc she was scary.

Anyways go listen to "The Whale" end credits song by Olly Alexander, u can thank me later ;)

As modern American tiny-budget indie rom-coms go, this is sweet and charming, managing to avoid falling into most of the mumble-core traps and cliche's. There's something more successfully wistful and sad than usual in this tale of two mismatched and very quirky young people stumbling into each other's lives.

When we meet 20 something Rose, she's literally wailing and crying as she drives her car – seemingly without aim – after discovering her husband has been having an affair. Before long she meets a young, sweetly quiet English boy in his late teens, who came to America to meet up with a girl, and has now been cast adrift by her (maybe – there's a lovely question mark over all this character's stories. While there are scenes that are too precious, and moments where it feels like the film-maker and actors are working a bit too hard and self-consciously at being charmingly weird – moments where you can almost see the actors/director think "this will be a cool choice" - there's also a lot of humanity and quiet emotion in the performances by Greta Gerwig and Olly Alexander – creating characters who both seem caught on the edge of real emotional trouble -and in the muted, touching images with which Alison Bagnall frames them.

Yes, maybe we cut to migrating birds one too many times, or we're ahead of the supposed twist of a scene now and then. But it's the moments of fragile human complexity that feel unusual in any American film-making these days, large or small, and which ultimately won this a place in my heart.