Paige doesn’t have a boyfriend because she spends all her time with her lesbian best friend. We know this because she bluntly announces it, word for word, in the opening moments of the film. It’s this level of artlessness, displayed time and again, that cages this would-be funny/sad tale of twentysomething angst. On paper Life Partners has what it takes to be a gem of a character-based indie, but as executed, I’m sorry to report, this movie borders on insufferable.
Paige (Gillian Jacobs) and Sasha (Leighton Meester) are best friends who like to pretend-fight in public and drink pink wine while watching Real Housewives. They are your 85-year-old grandmother’s idea of what quirky, alterna-gals are like. Paige is an environmental lawyer! Sasha wants to write songs! Sasha’s homosexuality is tacked on, the ultimate “she happens to be” aside. Other than one gag about Subarus, there is precious little in Life Partners that reflects any part of the struggle of being lesbian in contemporary America. Perhaps this is by design, a film-as-training-wheels for bigots who still can’t handle the idea of society’s shrinking closet. But the “they’re just like the rest of us” melody rings false. There are lesbians bursting out of the frame in every scene, but they’re all of the very camera-ready femme variety. The solitary exception being Gabourey Sidibe, who gets a few moments of screentime for sexless comic relief.
This would be easier to ignore if the rest of the movie weren’t such a drag. The conflict comes when Paige’s new beau (Adam Brody) changes up the dynamic. Suddenly Sasha doesn’t have unlimited access to her best chum. (You may find yourself reminded of the Simpsons episode in which Milhouse gets a girlfriend and Bart gets jealous.) Sitcom-like sequences pass the time until the eventual eruption of teary accusations. Sasha goes on a number of bad dates; Paige realizes that a relationship with a man is different from one with a gal pal. There’s trouble at work, trouble with a lawsuit, trouble with the bridal gown. It feels like a season of television hit with a space bag vacuum-seal. All the activity is there, but it’s frozen in place with no room to breathe – and hardly any way for audiences to engage with these characters as individuals. Paige has a revelatory fight with her mother toward the end of the film, but there’s no framework for this relationship. We’ve spent most of the movie listening to banter, not growing with the characters. Making matters worse, that banter rarely if ever brings the funny.
The final indignity comes with the moral the film delivers in the final act. Paige decides that Sasha needs to “grow up.” And the movie agrees with her. Now that Paige is getting married, and is happy with her job, Sasha needs to settle down, find a better monogamous partner and either devote herself to her music or give up. Her string of bad girlfriends is blamed on her immaturity. In other words, all her woes are her own damn fault. With friends like these, maybe they should all drift away with their new boyfriends, huh?
