Some of the best films aren’t necessarily smart, but they’re “sneaky-smart.” You go into them thinking you know what you’re getting into, and feeling impatient as a result, because the movie conspicuously makes choices that seem intended to announce which boxes it’s about to check off. Nicole Beckwith’s Together Together is exactly like this. The inquiries that open the film – “have you ever stolen anything?” “Are you religious?” “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” – don’t spring from a painfully intrusive first date at all. Rather, as protagonist Anna (Patti Harrison) spills her proclivity for thieving pens to the perplexed Matt (Ed Helms), she’s interviewing to become his surrogate. While previously briefly covered in the club’s SIFF 2021 escapade, this delightful indie comedy has now hit streaming services this week, and upon watching it a second time I am proud to both give Together Together a proper review and call it one of my favorite films of 2021 so far.
“This appeals to me because I know it’s not the best thing in the world, being alone,” rambles Anna, as she stutters to a comedic stop. Helms’ expressive reactions, delivered with aplomb, interlock delightfully with Harrison’s wry appeal. For Matt, Anna represents his third attempt at fatherhood – his ex-girlfriend had two miscarriages, and Matt desperately wants this bid to succeed. You get the feeling that Anna, a barista in her 20s, might be his last chance.
This simple set-up, which sees the trans Harrison cast in a cisgender role, allows for fascinating subversions of the romantic genre while still remaining familiar at its core due to the wonderful chemistry within the leads. Seeing disparate individuals empathizing despite their different backgrounds is one of the things that draws viewers to rom-coms, and the wonderful chemistry Helms and Harrison generate through their touching performances is exactly that, but platonic.
Anna dropped out of college, leaving her estranged family by moving from Seattle to San Francisco. She hopes the money from Matt will fund a second chance for her, as she desires to pursue her dreams of higher education and a different career. Matt is a single man in his 40s who works as a successful mobile application developer but has always been lonely, surrounded by divorced and self-involved parents, a dumb younger brother, various bad relationships, and few friends. The difference between their fortunes is not just symmetrical, as Anna’s pregnancy will lead to two (re)births: this child and Anna’s future. And in three chapters titled the “First,” “Second,” and “Third Trimesters,” Beckwith carefully unpacks the insecurities lurking underneath these two unfulfilled figures in just 90 minutes.
Biting loneliness is ultimately what leads to Matt and Anna’s odd friendship, as it’s often long-striving couples usually seeking the surrogacy route over single men. When Anna and Matt separately attend group therapy, they discover the uniqueness of their respective situations with consolation from the other participants. Their niche creates a need for empathy, which they can only find in each other. They watch Friends together – an allusion that feels too on the nose by the film’s end – while supporting their dreams and discussing their terrible families. Both Anna and Matt bear the weight of overbearing and judgmental mothers. Anna’s family appears in glimpses: Her mother leaves a prying voicemail after discovering the pregnancy, and a possible sighting of her father occurs where she works. They actively exist in her mind, the way floodwaters recede only to return at unwanted times. And since Anna keeps them at a distance, we’re kept there too. Though Matt’s parents appear, their complex relationship and the particular disappointment they have leaves one wanting greater detail.
For all the sizable gains Beckwith accrues building out Anna and Matt’s platonic companionship, she loses as much underdeveloping the intriguing supporting players. Matt solely knows Anna’s sardonic gay co-worker Jules (Julio Torres) as the person who exchanges cold stares with him, but Anna considers him her best friend despite knowing almost nothing about him, which shows her loneliness. Jean (Veep‘s Sufe Bradshaw), a deadpan nursing technician and the involuntary audience to Anna and Matt’s disagreements – whether Anna should have sex with other men while pregnant or whether they should know the baby’s gender – provides big deadpan laughs. The pair’s couples therapist, Madeline (Tig Notaro), is often two lines short of meaningful revelations. Torres, Bradshaw and Notaro all instill their characters with a deeper interiority than the script allows, making them wonderful additions despite their rather frustrating lack of development.
But none of that really matters because of the film’s scope. It ultimately seeks to tell stories that many films just gloss over, and it succeeds highly in this regard. The intergenerational, yet strictly platonic, friendship between Matt and Anna is a relationship that no films ever explore, as the only platonic friendships that seem to matter to filmmakers are ones belonging to the same gender. The message that people of different genders, ages, and identities can in fact be strictly friends is something Together Together hits right on the nose, heightens through the leads’ performances, and leaves a lot of room for in terms of future films. Additionally, the casting of Harrison, a trans woman, in the role of a surrogate mother, is impressive and daring on Beckwith’s end. While she’s exactly like her breakout role of Ruthie on Hulu’s Shrill in terms of personality, Anna’s “womanhood” is never brought into question, and she is treated just like a normal woman by everyone, leading to some potential bright futures for trans actors who don’t seek typecasting. I personally loved giving this a second watch just because of how much the message of friendship arising from mutual kindness resonated with me, and some of the most memorable sections of my second watch were the montages where viewers watch Helms and Harrison have fun together as friends rather than lovers. It’s truly a smart film in the way it conveys rom-com tropes in a non-romantic way, feeling familiar but innovative at the same time. And for a small and rather low-budget indie comedy, this is absolutely impressive.
5/5 STARS