Eugene Kotlyarenko’s latest flick, Wobble Palace, is a quirky comedy that follows a young couple’s attempts to find emotional and sexual contentment amidst their atrophying relationship. Eugene (played by Kotlyarenko himself) and Jane (Dasha Nekrasova, the film’s co-writer) are on the brink of breaking up when they decide to timeshare their Los Angeles apartment and date other people. But as it turns out, the course of polyamory doesn’t quite run smooth. The awkward reality of impromptu hookups and Tinder matches leaves this pair of millennials as lonely and unfulfilled as they were to begin with.
The film takes place over the Halloween weekend leading up to the fateful presidential election of 2016. There’s a sense of something sinister on the horizon and Eugene is haunted by prophetic nightmares of the impending Trump victory. Incidentally, he and Jane met at a polling station in 2012 whilst voting for Obama, but now we see them as their relationship is falling apart just like their hope of having Bernie as president. Repeatedly, the film satirizes the rhetoric of the incumbent POTUS; when Jane suggests the pair split occupation of their house, Eugene asks “Umm like ‘build a wall.'” It’s clear that Kotlyarenko and Nekrasova wanted this to be a film with biting political relevance.
Eugene is one of those self-proclaimed “good guys.” At first, we’re invited to laugh at his pathetic sexual frustration, but when interactions with girls on social media and prospective sexual encounters don’t quite go to plan he turns pretty nasty; we see that there’s something evidently pernicious behind his facade of civility. The anxiety and paranoia associated with online dating and social media certainly don’t help Eugene to become a better person. In fact, the internet doesn’t really seem to do a whole lot of good for anyone in the film. Jane’s career as an artist is crippled by her fear of being “basic,” and when she takes a seemingly trivial online quiz it confirms her worst nightmare. The struggle of millennials trying to satisfy their narcissism is something that’s heavily parodied by Kotlyarenko and Nekrasova. Jane sums it up when she says: “They call us a generation of narcissists but it’s not like we have anything else besides student debt and front-facing cameras.”
Often, a shallow depth of field is used in the film, leaving Jane or Eugene in focus whilst the rest of the world around them is almost indiscernible. Even the cinematography seems to reflect the characters’ struggle with their own self-importance. With the same director of photography as the Safdie brothers’ Good Time (2017), there’s a similar lurid look to this film, and with most of the shots in soft focus, it’s got a strange, surreal beauty about it.
Wobble Palace is an anti-rom-com for the modern age. Its unique kookiness, witty humor, and cringe-worthy relevance mean it’s definitely worth a watch.
Score: 4/5
Wobble Palace is playing for one night only at North West Film Forum on Dec. 12. You can get more info here.