A young woman’s decision to take control of her destiny and her fertility backfires when she falls in (and out of) love with a married man. There’s something of the Jane Austen heroine in manipulative but well-meaning Maggie (Greta Gerwig, dialling down some of the kookiness that unbalanced Mistress America): she’s Emma transposed to the age of turkey basters and sperm donors. A refreshingly complex and even somewhat unlikable character, she is presented without judgment. Gerwig’s gift for gauche naturalism brings an easy familiarity to the role; Maggie feels like the annoyingly controlling friend you can’t help but love despite yourself.
Rebecca Miller’s wry, intellectually agile drama is the most overtly comic of her films so far, thanks largely to a wonderfully sly turn by Julianne Moore. She plays Georgette, the brilliant and self-obsessed academic who, at the start of the film, is married to John (Ethan Hawke). Also an academic (he’s described as “the bad boy of fictocritical anthropology”), John’s work, and his life, have been overshadowed by Georgette’s stellar career. Moore’s deadpan delivery is given a touch of absurdity by her Danish accent – she pontificates about “Pussy Wiot”.
After a chance encounter, John gives Maggie the transcript of his work-in-progress novel to read. She is smitten; he falls readily in love with the younger woman who recognises the genius that he believes is being squashed by his wife’s success. However, two years and a child later, life with John isn’t working out quite as Maggie had expected.
Although droll rather than laugh-out-loud funny, this is a smart and immensely enjoyable romcom. The traditional love triangle dynamic is subverted: the most intriguing relationship here is the prickly friendship which develops between the two women who, on paper, have little in common apart from the same man.
