Mutual Appreciation

Throughout history, there have been people who have changed the world. Edison gave us the light bulb; Guttenburg the printing press. I feel I am offering a public service for all mankind just as great by warning people to stay away from "Mutual Appreciation".

It is perhaps the most monotonous movie I have ever seen. Nothing happens. These slackers, who are really disturbing to look at, just sit there and talk. I wouldn't have a problem with that if they had something interesting to say. They don't. And they have nothing to say in the most dreary manner possible. No ups, no downs. Just flat, unemotional speaking. It is just true torture. Please, please, for all that is good and holy, ignore the critics who liked this and avoid this horrific piece of...film.

I think a film like Mutual Appreciation and films in general akin to Mutual Appreciation will more often than not get a bit of a sigh from its audience following the first five minutes, possibly followed by a rolling of the eyes. But while certain experiments can go wrong when it comes to film, I don't think Mutual Appreciation is a film to be sniffed at. Its really low budget and the fact it goes a for a pretty long runtime considering what conditions these people are making it under add to the overall experience of watching a film as guerrilla style and as unordinary as this one but the most surprising thing I found was just how interested I really was as these scenes and this runtime were totalling up.

Mutual Appreciation is a film about students, made by students. It carries all those tags you'd associated with the young, the up-coming and the adventurous in the sense there are lots of long takes; there's dialogue that doesn't revolve around anything and the makers are using people they probably picked off the street for locations that are their own homes – the film even gives us a few well shot scenes on actual streets but not in the cornered off, Hollywood sense where lots of extras make up the background and a police presence stops anything going wrong, oh no: this is neo-realism, out on the roads, with self-motivated written permission for filming and everything else that comes with it.

I guess we've all attempted to make a film at one point in our lives. For some, it becomes careers; for others it is limited to a brief recording of a friend or loved one on a holiday via a camera phone or a recording of an event such as a wedding or birthday party, the ultimate 'home movie'. But Mutual Appreciation is a 'home movie' of sorts that relies on people in a fictional yet realistic situation attempting to, at the film's core, find who they are and where they belong with what they belong doing following up as a sort of sub-theme. Conversations can take place in houses or flats; on city streets or in cars and can revolve around anything in particular like the size of a mole on someone's body to the meaningless chit-chat that occurs between a band member and the host before a live musical performance.

But the truly scary thing about the dialogue is just how good it is or just how interesting it is when it's trying to be smart and carry substance. The host of the musical performance owns a cinematic space that is vastly the superior of all the other locations, especially ones that dictate where certain characters live. In his kitchen, primary characters Alan (Rice) and Sera (Lee) will have an uneasy conversation that will have you flinch somewhat to do with their relationship – it does not help matters that the preceding scenes had her in a flirtatious mindset with the host of both the apartment.

But as I say, the film's focus is on these people and where they fit into society. Alan seems to be chasing a musical fondness of some sort but must negotiate girls in the process as well as his father's constant wish for him to earn money to help for more immediate issues. The film gives us splashes of other people. Lawrence, played by Andrew Bujalski the film's writer/director gives advice in his own little room to a girl who is requesting help for male read monologues, something that has no bearing on the overall film but does pop up later on reminding us of this earlier exchange. The point here being that whilst not necessarily demanding an 'art' label, the film proves it is able to deliver a nicely written scene in which one character will help another through good dialogue – good dialogue being pretty much the only thing films like this have initially: they don't have much money for special effect or acting talent and cannot give us lush locations and fancy visual aids but anybody can write a page of dialogue on anything. Mutual Appreciation takes advantage of this one factor.

Going on from the scenes that do work through attention to substance, Alan's immediate life is focused upon following the leaving of the host's flat following the musical performance. He visits a girl with whom he is friends and nothing more. He has left the previous apartment with his female 'partner' still there after going through a minor break-up with someone who came onto him and witnessing her flirtatious activity. In the new location, he is relegated once more and his manhood jeopardised when the female host and her female friends convince him to dress up in female clothing this relegating him further into a sort of metaphorical mire of embarrassment and failure to control a situation when activity involving multiple genders threaten to escalate out of Alan's control – he has failed again.

But Alan's voyage around a night time urban location does not go on for too long and the theory reading has to stop after this scene; this is not Mike Leigh's 1993 film Naked after all. But what it is is an interesting and somewhat unique look at life in America round about now as a young adult or late teen. When issues of sex and relationships arise they are not dealt with in a childish 'American Pie' manner but are constructed and developed - not a film for all but I got a mild kick out of it.

I saw Mutual Appreciation on the bottom row of a 'new release' section of a movie shop and it caught my eye. I usually am a sucker for movies that are deeper than the average celluloid we are bombarded with. I didn't have a great expectation for the movie, which turned out to be great. The dialog isn't deep. And it isn't meant to be. It's very real to life. The colours and positioning really captured the essence of the movie: bleak and monotonous. I did like it for the fact I felt that I could relate to more than one character, and the characters were realistic and likable. I've read previous remarks, and I suppose the only advice I can give is to watch the movie without expectations and with a open mind. On reflection, try and see if you can relate some of the central themes to your life and you will be pleasantly surprised. As a 16 year old that is trying to find movies that break the conventional mould, I found this refreshing and it made me hopeful for some reason. I will definitely be checking out Funny Ha Ha.

Without condemning the whole mumblecore movement, I think I sympathise more with its critics than its fans. The films certainly convey relationships between their characters realistically, and there are some scenes in each mumblecore film I've seen which I could almost recognise for myself, but I'm always overwhelmed by this slightly smug self-awareness that pervades many artists working under the 'indie' banner. It is easy to believe that the makers of these films are very similar to their characters – young, confused, directionless – but the fact that the focus most often falls on the progeny of the last bourgeois generation takes away the integrity of this gritty, frugal filming style.

Mutual Appreciation is as much a milestone of indie film-making as it is a victim of its own pretences. The observer paradox seems to pervade much of the dialogue, much of which feels calculatingly awkward – it is easy to distinguish between the improvised lines and premeditated lines. Having said that, I was struck by one scene where Alan is besieged by with women at a 'party' he wasn't certain about going to in the first place, and is eventually convinced to don a dress and make-up. Here it seems the actors were given the most room to ad-lib, and it's a brilliant piece of footage which seems to speak to the majority of young adults and their issues with projecting identity.

I haven't seen this director's first film, the 2002 Funny Ha Ha, but I'm already a fan, if a mild one, from this second effort. It's enjoyable to watch the quiet textures of ordinary young adult American life that Andrew Bujalski weaves, because his people talk in ways that are both witty and remarkably believable, even if the rhythms are mostly lackadaisical.

"If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer," Variety's Joe Leydon has written, "the result might have looked and sounded like Mutual Appreciation." That indeed does give you a starting point for understanding what Andrew Bujalski (a Harvard film graduate, now thirty-one) is up to, except that these aren't Seventies American actors or later French ones, but mostly twenty-something American non-actors, and the result of the blending of methods and interests of those two older directors is different, of course, from either Rohmer or Cassavetes. Bujalski's film is grainy black and white, the look is rough, the scenes are improvisational and vérité. The topics and the conversations are delicate, however, like Rohmer's; there aren't any long harangues or violent arguments or tortured late-night epiphanies as was Cassavetes' way. Attractions, desires, choices – no huge dramas.

There's really just a triangle, two male friends and the girlfriend of one of them. The boyfriend is Lawrence (Bujalski himself); the girlfriend is Ellie (Rachel Clift). The other guy is Alan (Justin Rice, in real life founder of the indie-rock band Bishop Allen), who's just come to town (NYC, i.e., Brooklyn), whose band has split up, and who wants to get started again. Alan has an interview of radio, and the host, Sara (Seung-Min Lee) later hits on him. During the course of the action, at several times when Lawrence is away, Alan and Ellie acknowledge that they "like" each other. They have a "moment," as they say. But they don't do anything about it, as far as we see (the scenes are chopped off at the ends almost every time; that's the style). They both separately tell Lawrence about their "moment." Some consideration of gender roles comes up when Lawrence agrees -- very half-heartedly -- to participate in a reading of women's experiences with men; and when Alan is talked into putting on a dress. The trio of lovers and friends acknowledge the temptation to infidelity that has happened and end with a group hug. That's all that happens in the 109 minutes.

There's a hand-held camera, the grainy look of 16 mm., but Bujalski doesn't revel in the richness of black and white as Cassavetes' cameramen did. There's nothing particularly cinematic about Bujalski's method, which also has little to do with politics or current events or trends – except for the presence of cell phones. There are hardly any exterior shots. But something magical does happen in the way Bujalski and Rice and the other main characters, who aren't particularly photogenic, to put it mildly, start to look good to us, because the inner beauty of their natures – Alan's openness and positivity; Lawrence's sensitivity and goodness – gradually emerges from the thick grain. Because Bujalski's kitchen-sink use of awkwardness is so adept, it almost disappears. The pace is sometimes excruciating, but in a way this isn't a movie; it doesn't feel like one; and that's not so bad.

What makes the movie a success is the naturalness doesn't seem forced or self-conscious. The people aren't actor-y like Cassavetes and his pals. Their conversations are choppy and awkward sometimes, but alert, even witty. These aren't Actors Studio-style tortured-intensity Stanislawski moments, but remarkably believable recreations of twenty-first-century, twenty-something American conversations. Bujalski's characters, as his Wikipedia bio says, are "well-educated, yet socially inept young white people." The scenes, which include a show at a club that's not very well attended, and a little gathering at an older man's house afterward followed by another dying party of three women in wigs who dress Alan in drag, and phone conversations between Alan, the singer, and his father (one of them to voice mail, while Alan strums his guitar and doesn't answer), have a documentary feel, but it's a documentary that's niftily edited, about people observed so nicely you end by liking them.

In limited release. Seen at Cinema Village NYC September 18, 2006.