Emily (Caroline White) and Andrew (Kentucker Audley) are pretty much your typical well-to-do mid-to-late
twenties couple: They try to convince themselves they are still artists at
heart and try to remain hip and relevant (whatever that means) - but they have
long moved out to the suburbs to enjoy all the creature comforts, and even
though they are not married (some kind of revolution against the
establishment I assume), they seem like your typical old couple. Then
friends bring their 7 months old (Jude Swanberg) over to babysit for a day, and this
experience witht he kid that can't even speak or do much, changes
everything. Basically, it made Emily realize she wants a kid of her own,
would love for Andrew to impregnate her on the spot, and she wants to
marry before the kid is born. Unfortunately, Andrew's feelings towards
marriage and children did not change in the same way, and more so than
actually fully disagreeing with Emily, he feels been taken by surprise -
and during the discussion that ensues, Emily and Andrew have to realize
they have different opinions about quite a lot of things. They might not
even be made for each other ... The last scene shows Andrew mowing the
lawn, Emily watering it - and what you make of it is up to you ... A
short (~ 55 minutes) feature about love, kids and marriage, and the fact
that these three don't necessarily go together - which is a topic which is
usually either exaggerated until it becomes ridiculous or given the kitsch
treatment to in the process be derived of all relevance. But director Joe
Swanberg manages to walk the fine line here: His direction is subtle and
light-footed enough to never just hammering the message home while his
actors are capable enough and the film's dialogue is poignant enough to
get the point across in a pretty likeable, unembarrassing manner anyways. Pretty
nice, actually! By the way: To celebrate the release of Joe
Swanberg's Silver Bullets,
the first film in the Joe Swanberg: Collected Films 2011-subscription
- http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/joe-swanberg-collected-films-2
- Marriage Material will be streaming for free on Vimeo for
a limited time beginning January 16th, 2012 - http://vimeo.com/34790491.
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