KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #11: TOGETHER TOGETHER (2021, Nikole Beckwith, USA)
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Matt (Ed Helms) is a 45 year old single man who knows one thing for certain, that he wants to be a father. So what do you do when you have the means and the desire, but no partner? You find yourself a donor egg and a gestational surrogate, that’s what you do.
Anna (Patti Harrison) is a 26 year old single woman who, due to having and giving up a baby in high school, didn’t go to college, is estranged from her family, and wants both to help someone have a baby, and to have enough money to go back to school and get her degree. It seems like a simple enough transaction, in that people do it all the time, but in this case, due to the fact that both Matt and Anna are so generally isolated and lonely, their lives get tangled up in each other’s. Not romantically, it’s not that kind of movie, but as friends, though more than friends, because of the baby connection. On the other hand, how do you stay friends after the baby is born, and should you even be friends at all? Where are the boundaries?
This is a lovely, moving, and very funny movie about unmoored people, anchored by two excellent central performances. Ed Helms is far more than just a solid comic performer, as he has had occasional opportunities to show in his career, and he is very good here, as a man who wants to be in control of a situation that he cannot control, and who is not only yearning for a child, but for human connection in a world where he neither fits in with his friends with families, nor his friends clinging to the single party life of their 20s.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Patti Harrison is a real find, here, playing the smart, sardonic Anna, who wants to move on with her life after having been in a holding pattern since breaking up with her boyfriend. She works in a coffee shop, she lives alone, when she gets good news, she can’t think of a single person to tell it to. She doesn’t particularly plan on being friends with the guy she is a surrogate for, but she finds that connection spark that isn’t always romantic. Sometimes someone comes into your life for a weird reason, and you find that you had been missing this exact person all along, before you even knew they existed.
The supporting cast is full of treasures, the great Tig Notaro as the couple’s therapist Matt and Anna go to to negotiate their way through this surrogacy, Fred Melamed and Nora Dunn as Matt’s divorced parents, who are a lot, Julio Torres as Anna’s gay coffee shop co-worker, and Sufe Bradshaw, in a marvelous turn as the stone-faced ultrasound tech, who is a little thrown by this weird relationship that she sees ebb and flow over the pregnancy. All in all, this is an outstanding film about an unusual relationship. Writer-director Nikole Beckwith keeps a sure hand on the proceedings, never letting it get maudlin or gooey, and letting us see both Anna and Matt’s point of view as they find their way along this strange, but in the end, lovely path in their lives.
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog