The Overnight

We all know that it’s not pos­si­ble for any one per­son to have it all, but that doesn’t stop us from being envi­ous of those who appear to do so. A film about learn­ing to accept the hand you’ve been dealt that says it’s per­fect­ly nat­ur­al to want what you can’t have, The Overnight is writer/​director Patrick Brice’s play­ful peek into the psy­che of that ter­mi­nal­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed social group: the white low­er-mid­dle class Amer­i­can thir­tysome­thing couple.

We’re in Los Ange­les, a land of hard bod­ies and pool par­ty liaisons that’s as famil­iar to movie­go­ers as it is alien to Alex (Adam Scott) and Emi­ly (Tay­lor Schilling), who’ve recent­ly relo­cat­ed from Seat­tle. One morn­ing at the local park with their infant son RJ, Alex and Emi­ly meet Kurt (Jason Schwartz­man), a charis­mat­ic yup­pie in a sil­ly hat whose son is engaged in some sand­pit pleas­antries with RJ. After some brief smalltalk, Kurt some­what insis­tent­ly invites the entire fam­i­ly over for a playdate.

Alex and Emi­ly have been mean­ing to get out and meet new peo­ple and this seems as good an oppor­tu­ni­ty as any to get a flavour for the neigh­bour­hood, so they glad­ly take Kurt up on his offer. On first impres­sion, Kurt’s is a #blessed exis­tence – he’s mar­ried to a beguil­ing, free-spir­it­ed French woman named Char­lotte (Judith Godrèche), lives in a huge house and has an absolute­ly enor­mous… well, we’ll come onto that shortly.

Ear­ly on dur­ing what turns out to be a long, lib­er­at­ing evening, Alex and Emi­ly put RJ and their inhi­bi­tions to bed in a bid to show that their joie de vivre is as intense as when they first got togeth­er. They may be sprogged-up and under a fair amount of finan­cial strain, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be sexy and spon­ta­neous (just maybe not that sexy and spon­ta­neous). As the cou­ples swap best par­ent­ing prac­tices and mull over the more eso­teric appli­ca­tions of breast­feed­ing – a steady flow of liquor pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary social lubri­cant – Kurt and Char­lotte decide to move the par­ty out­side where a pal­pa­ble sex­u­al fris­son takes hold.

As mar­riage-satiris­ing sit­u­a­tion­al come­dies go, The Overnight is more acute­ly observed than any­thing we’ve seen since Judd Apatow’s superla­tive 2013 film This is 40. That’s not to say it’s espe­cial­ly pro­found in its decon­struc­tion of 21^st cen­tu­ry adult rela­tion­ships, more that Brice’s script is tighter than your aver­age indie rom-com (which admit­ted­ly isn’t say­ing much). Yet amid all the intox­i­cat­ed epipha­nies, over­shar­ing and res­o­lu­tion mak­ing, by far the biggest rev­e­la­tion arrives in the form of Jason Schwartzman’s eye-water­ing pros­thet­ic mem­ber, which expos­es the film’s curi­ous pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with an exclu­sive­ly male obses­sion while pro­vid­ing a quirky con­ver­sa­tion starter.

The prob­lem for any­one who’s ever wit­nessed some­one bring a bratwurst to a cock­tail sausage par­ty is that, in this instance, the ensu­ing con­ver­sa­tion pans out pret­ty much as you’d expect. There are plen­ty of cathar­tic home truths here and no short­age of amus­ing moments, but it’s hard­ly sub­ver­sive film­mak­ing. By day­break it’s clear that a gen­uine, last­ing bond has been formed between these four indi­vid­u­als. It’s a shame that Brice’s film fails to estab­lish a sim­i­lar­ly mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion with its audience.