Am I OK? – first-look review

Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne have quite the his­to­ry with Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. The cou­ple met play­ing love inter­ests in Sundance’s indie dar­ling In a World…, then at the 2015 fes­ti­val Notaro’s very per­son­al doc­u­men­tary Tig pre­miered, and now the pair return with their direc­to­r­i­al fea­ture debut Am I OK?. A love sto­ry about friend­ship and com­ing-of-age in your thir­ties, Notaro and Allynne’s charm­ing film is a sure crowd-pleaser.

Lucy (Dako­ta John­son) and Jane (Sonoya Mizuno) – ​“sis­ters in a past life” as their LA yoga instruc­tor describes them – are best friends with con­flat­ed lives; they know each other’s drinks order by heart, have no qualms in shar­ing a bath­room, and prac­ti­cal­ly share one wardrobe. How­ev­er, things are about to change: Jane is offered a pro­mo­tion that would whisk her, and her easy-going boyfriend (Jer­maine Fowler), away to a new office in Lon­don and, dis­traught that her friend is slip­ping through her fin­gers, after a few cock­tails Lucy decides now is the time to come out to her best friend as a lesbian.

This nav­i­ga­tion of self-accep­tance in adult­hood is aid­ed by Lau­ren Pomerantz’s love­able script, based on her expe­ri­ence of self-dis­cov­ery in her thir­ties, that expert­ly hits the beats of sen­si­tiv­i­ty and sin­cer­i­ty in depict­ing the anx­i­eties of com­ing out as an adult. The bal­ance between adven­tur­ous Jane and the more reserved Lucy is also well-kept but the bud­dy com­e­dy humour often threat­ens to throw the film off course. Nev­er­the­less, with a sound­track infused with St Vin­cent and Phoebe Bridgers and Notaro with her own comed­ical­ly timed cameo, it’s hard not to warm to Am I OK?.

“I don’t even know what I am,” cries the 32-year-old, John­son some­how even makes blub­ber­ing beau­ti­ful. John­son and Mizuno share such nat­ur­al chem­istry, effort­less in their por­tray­al of two women who trea­sure their bond as if it is a pre­cious pen­dant they wear over their hearts. Lit by an ambi­ent gold­en glow, the mur­mured ​“I love you”s that come dur­ing their sleep­over are heart­break­ing as the real­i­sa­tion of the impend­ing 5,500-mile gap that will be put between them dawns.

Jane becomes a lit­tle hard­er to love as she walks into a les­bian bar like she owns the place and doesn’t see Lucy is still in the rite of pas­sage ​‘am I gay?’ quiz stage of self-dis­cov­ery but Mizuno does well to keep her char­ac­ter root­ed. Mean­while, Lucy’s baby gay appre­hen­sion has her umming and ahhing over pick­ing up all the flir­ta­tious hints her masseuse co-work­er Brit (Kiersey Clemons) is dropping.

All the while, Am I OK? very much stays in its own com­fort zone, the tac­tile com­fort­a­bil­i­ty it radi­ates promis­es a pre­vail­ing light­ness even as it con­fronts the sud­den strain on Lucy and Jane’s friend­ship. This is an earnest tale of a late bloomer and while more intro­spec­tive cathar­sis could have been drawn from this con­tem­pla­tion of friend­ship and romance, Notaro and Allynne’s debut remains a pleas­ing watch.