Release Date: July 10 (limited)
Director: Lynn Shelton
Writer: Lynn Shelton
Starring: Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard,
Alycia Delmore
Cinematographer: Benjamin Kasulke
Studio/Run Time: Magnolia Pictures, 95
mins.
Ben and Andrew’s infinitely awkward
sex dare
If Kevin Smith’s movie Zack and Miri
Make a Porno had an ounce of spontaneity and a drop of wisdom, it
might have resembled Humpday, the new film from Lynn Shelton. I’m
not sure that Shelton would care much for the comparison, since she’s
made a comedy with real characters and very few, if any, raunchy
jokes, but the plots are similar enough that Humpday feels like Zack
and Miri’s low-budget indie cousin.
Ben and Andrew (played by Mark Duplass
from The Puffy Chair and Joshua Leonard from The Blair Witch Project)
go way back. But they’ve drifted apart. Ben’s married and trying
to have a kid; Andrew’s a free spirit who drifts into town one
night unannounced, hoping to reconnect with his buddy. They end up at
a party full of counter-culture types, an environment where Andrew
instantly befriends everyone and Ben just does his best to keep up,
trying not to look like the married fuddy-duddy that he fears he’s
become. The effervescent atmosphere leads to a conversation about an
amateur porn contest run by a local magazine, and before the night is
over, when the pot smoke is at it’s thickest, Ben and Andrew have
dared each other to make—and star in—their own adult video, with
all that that entails.
Humpday may sound superficially like
Smith’s film, but the premise and tone, at least initially, are
more like Kelly Reichardt’s film Old Joy, and in that comparison,
Humpday feels not like your stuffy aunt but like your rebellious
cousin. Old Joy is a beautiful, subtly political lament, but Humpday
seems like the film that it might have turned into if its director
had ditched the script and lit up a doobie once the cameras started
rolling. “OK, suppose these old friends agree to, I don’t know,
have sex on camera.” Wait. What?
So Humpday itself is a little like Ben
and a little like Andrew, depending on your point of view. It’s a
free spirit, but it’s also grounded in real life. One day, those
two personalities meet, and it can’t end well, for the characters
or the film. But Shelton, who often seems hemmed in by the high
concept, manages to worm her way out so expertly that when it’s
over the whole thing feels like it was built backwards, starting not
with the premise but with the last conversation between Ben and
Andrew, a funny, observant look at the way straight male buddies
interact. Personally, I’ve never seen two guys rationalize their
way into or out of a porn shoot, but I nevertheless feel like I’ve
heard this final conversation before. The topic is wild, but the
nervous cadence, the macho attitude, and the analytical explanations
are entirely familiar.
Humpday is a comedy, but for sheer fun,
I probably prefer Baghead, the under-seen movie that was written and
directed last year by Mark Duplass and his brother Jay. Baghead also
moves in two directions at once—it’s a little bit funny and a
little bit creepy—but because it seems more willing to let those
conflicting modes ricochet off of each other instead of encouraging
them to make peace, it’s open to all possibilities, ready to spring
in any direction at any moment. Many of Humpday’s conversations
feel spontaneous, like the one where Ben breaks the news of the dare
to his wife, but the basic arc of the story fits into one flat track,
focusing all of its comic suspense into a corner. We know where it’s
going. We just don’t know what’s going to happen when it gets
there. But it turns out that the corner has a tasty little iced
cupcake waiting for those who accept the silly idea. It’s worth the
wait, even if it leaves you a little hungry when it’s gone.