The Feel­ing That the Time for Doing Some­thing Has Passed – first-look review

There’s no short­age of great media that exists about being a thir­ty-some­thing in a state of arrest­ed devel­op­ment. From Sein­feld to The Worst Per­son in the World writ­ers and film­mak­ers find rich inspi­ra­tion in the idea that we should have every­thing fig­ured out by the time our twen­ties are over, and rou­tine­ly delight in dis­pelling this myth. As such, it’s hard to present a work that feels tru­ly orig­i­nal as well as high­ly enter­tain­ing, but in her fea­ture debut, Joan­na Arnow man­ages to do exact­ly that, draw­ing heav­i­ly on her own expe­ri­ences to cre­ate an awk­ward, endear­ing por­trait of a woman try­ing to fig­ure out what she wants from life.

Work­ing a menial office job and frus­trat­ing her par­ents due to her lack of ambi­tion in any capac­i­ty, Ann (played by Arnow) drifts through life, strug­gling to form con­nec­tions with those around her. She has a long-stand­ing dom/​sub rela­tion­ship with an old­er man named Allen (Scott Cohen) but he bare­ly remem­bers basic facts about her and fre­quent­ly chas­tis­es her for talk­ing too much. It’s clear the dal­liance is unhealthy – per­haps even to both of them – but Ann is stuck, unable to real­ly see a bet­ter way of ful­fill­ing her desires. With Allen’s encour­age­ment, she attempts dat­ing oth­er men, but finds only rit­u­al humil­i­a­tion with­out the close­ness, until she meets Chris (Babak Tafti), a charm­ing, goofy exper­i­men­tal musi­cian who likes Ann just the way she is.

Arnow’s script cap­tures the anx­i­eties and banal­i­ties of mil­len­ni­al life with uncan­ny pre­ci­sion – both dia­logue and phys­i­cal com­e­dy play a sig­nif­i­cant role in form­ing an awk­ward but endear­ing por­trait of a painful­ly aver­age exis­tence. Ann is the arche­typ­al every­woman, and Arnow’s refresh­ing­ly naked and unself-con­scious por­tray­al feels much clos­er to real­i­ty than most films in the broad com­ing-of-age genre man­age to get.

Yet the film is also a skil­ful, sen­si­tive por­tray­al of BDSM rela­tion­ships, cap­tur­ing a more nuanced side of the often maligned com­mu­ni­ty. Ann’s inter­est in and desire for a dom/​sub dynam­ic does not dis­ap­pear when she enters a lov­ing rela­tion­ship, illus­trat­ing that BDSM doesn’t cor­re­late with a lack of love or self-esteem (a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion). It’s a con­fi­dent, sweet and deeply fun­ny fea­ture debut, that gives a sharp sense of Arnow’s per­son­al­i­ty and vision, and announces her as a bright new spark in the Amer­i­can indie landscape.