Director: Rebecca Miller
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 2.0
Single professor Maggie (Greta Gerwig) wants to have a child but not a male companion so she asks close-talking pickle entrepreneur Guy (Travis Fimmel) for his seed (in a cup) - meanwhile, she becomes 'friends' with professor/writer John Harding (Ethan Hawke) who's in an unhappy marriage with chilly Georgette (Julianne Moore). Begins with this Woody Allen vibe but fumbles the tone: if the inhabitants of this year's Tallulah came across as slimy, this is about emotionally immature characters (mainly Maggie and John ... Georgette's passive-aggressive) pretending they can 'rise above' the gravity of real world problems (motherhood, self-sufficiency, fidelity) and believing academia, Iago-esque manipulation (getting your husband to have sex with his ex-wife is twisted ... and cowardly) and meditation can 'fix' all matters of actual substance. Gerwig's still being cast as the flake who screws everything up (whoopsie!) but comes out ahead (whew!), Moore's accent is ... different and Hawke playing the Intellectual has the same level of authenticity as when Franco does it (except Franco's not even remotely serious). It missed a golden opportunity to have Žižek appear on screen sniffing and rambling (and so on).
