IN A RELATIONSHIP: Nobody Is Having Any Fun

It’s Crazy Stupid Love meets Ingrid Goes West. It’s a group of millennials navigating their relationships while living beautiful, carefree lives in Los Angeles.

Sam Boyd’s film In a Relationship explores the relationships of two couples. Owen (Michael Angarano) and Hallie (Emma Roberts) find themselves at a juncture after years together, unsure whether to move in together or call it all off.

Matt (Patrick Gibson) and Willa (Dree Hemingway) begin their romance in the back of a decked-out Uber on their way home from a party. They go on quirky dates together, drinking Willa’s signature Vodka water in the back of a van on the OJ Simpson tour.

Dating and Flailing

The film is all about the four twenty-somethings figuring out their relationships. To do this, they spend a lot of time going on dates together and then talking about their relationship status with their friends. This often is so linear that Matt and Owen discuss whether Matt and Willa are dating at the same time that Willa tells Hallie they’re not.

Instead of using visual storytelling to explore dating and convey its discomfort and awkwardness for all four involved, the film has the characters discuss their feelings explicitly. It all feels on the nose and wrapped up in trappings of some idea of millennial culture.

People talk a lot. The writing of the film needs you to know that the characters watched the OJ miniseries, Felicity, and a Stephen Hawking special on HBO Go. They’re up on their culture. They talk about Hallie’s NuvaRing and about the rocket ship comforter on Matt’s bed. Instead of trusting the audience to discern ridiculous aspects of their lives, the film washes us with a deluge of millennial ephemera. Perhaps this is most clear and over the top when Hallie asks Willa if they can look at pictures of sushi on Yelp to cheer her up.

Rapid cuts from one character to the other accelerate the exploration and the conversations. The back and forth of these cuts reinforces the film’s uncertainty. Instead of slowing down to figure things out, it rushes through to say what it feels it needs to.

More Than Vapid Is Less Fun

Things do begin to shift, though. As relationships between the four become more complicated, the editing underscores their processes of learning and discovering what romance can look like. Earlier in the film, the camera cuts quickly between characters when they speak. As it progresses, shots frame people together on screen and cuts are more infrequent. Instead of focusing on individuals, the film considers the unit and the status of that unit in different moments in time.

If early on, they all get to have fun and go out, they begin having to confront their feelings without an easy release in sight. Longer shots emphasize how all four now need to engage with the seriousness of their developing, or unraveling, relationships: most often, these moments are uncomfortable and mount tension. Though everything had been fun and free before, the editing conveys the uncertainty beneath it all.

Lighting and set design also capture In A Relationships’s criticisms of the aspirational culture in which they live. So much of the film is composed of dialogue, and so much of that dialogue is enclosed in the character’s apartments. These spaces are cozy, with unmade beds, lots of wood, and sleek, minimalist kitchenware and succulents.

When they inhabit these spaces, they feel thoroughly lived in – the spaces seem authentic – but that effort oftentimes feels as obvious as the dialogue is. The film wants to think this is real life. And yet, the characters seem to believe this is how their lives should look. On some level, the spaces we peek inside of seem to capture the gazed-upon design of millennial life.

Contrasted with shots of the California sky, pastel walls, and palm trees, the film does achieve a sense of the beauty and richness people aspire to. In juxtaposing the earthy, cozy lights and confined spaces with the outdoors, there’s an ongoing tension between the indoors – and enclosure of these relationships – and the expanse of the outdoors and, most often, the friendships that get to inhabit those spaces.

At times, the writing and performances similarly toe the line between satire and a lack of self-awareness. Roberts is sometimes made to sound, unfairly shrill, which compounds with her desire to move in with Owen and lends her character descriptors like “bossy” or “needy.” Angarano epitomizes shameless schlub throughout the film.

In both cases, they feel less believable, both as a couple and as people to empathize with on screen. Though they’re written more as caricatures than as people, both manage to convey discontent, second-guessing, and desire in sidelong glances and quiet moments. Their performances refresh the tropes that have been tired on screen before, but they’re not given much space within the confines of the film to confront these archetypes.

In A Relationship: Fun But Misses the Mark

In A Relationship has moments when it breaks through. Sometimes, there’s recognition of the discontent and discomfort of dating and exploring. Most often, though, the aspirations of the characters are made to be fun, quirky, and endearing instead of something to criticize and laugh at. The result is a voyeuristic peek inside of their vapid lives.

The film pairs well with a frosé: good for an evening when you don’t want to think about much but are looking to get a few laughs in.

What current films depict modern dating and romance well? Do you connect with dating as portrayed in this film?

In A Relationship was released in the US on November 9, 2018 after debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival.

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