Maggie’s Plan

Author and film­mak­er Rebec­ca Miller reflects on rela­tion­ships, par­ent­hood and all the messy stuff that come with them in this light, fast-paced roman­tic com­e­dy set in the world of high acad­e­mia. She pits choice against fate on issues of the heart and the out­come is an enjoy­ably quirky though some­what detached explo­ration of the many frus­tra­tions of mod­ern love.

Mag­gie (Gre­ta Ger­wig) declares to her best friend Tony (Bill Had­er) that she wants to have a baby through arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion as they stroll through a Brook­lyn food mar­ket. Tony, a father in a long-term rela­tion­ship with Feli­cia (Maya Rudolph), whose young son sports an over­sized ​“Imag­ine there’s no frack­ing” badge, gen­tly mocks her request. She explains that none of her rela­tion­ships last, so she might as well take care of busi­ness on her own.

Miller is aware of and com­fort­able with the mid­dle-class ennui she por­trays. It’s often pre­pos­ter­ous, and she ful­ly embraces that. She also pokes fun at aca­d­e­m­ic chitchat and ultra-com­pet­i­tive­ness between fic­to-crit­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy pro­fes­sor John (Ethan Hawke) and his super suc­cess­ful wife Geor­gette (Julianne Moore). When Mag­gie bumps into John in the uni­ver­si­ty office over a pay cheque mishap, the two become friends and embark on an affair which in turn ends his marriage.

But the sto­ry has only just begun at this point, with the view­er being brought for­ward three years to the point where Mag­gie realis­es John may not be the man for her. At the peak of her exas­per­a­tion she asks, ​“Am I so capa­ble I don’t deserve any atten­tion?” Then John begins anoth­er long phone call with his ex-wife on the fin­er points of the nov­el that he and Mag­gie ini­tial­ly bond­ed over. Instead of sim­ply leav­ing him, she for­mu­lates a plan that she believes will make every­one happy.

Con­tempt for the self-absorbed male writer was superbly han­dled in Alex Ross Perry’s 2014 film, Lis­ten Up Philip. Lina Wolff’s 2016 nov­el, ​‘Bret Eas­t­on Ellis and the Oth­er Dogs,’ also cov­ered sim­i­lar frus­tra­tions in the lit­er­ary world, but where these take the form of scathing and wit­ty reprisals, Miller takes a more friv­o­lous tack and laughs at the absur­di­ty of it all. Her world, by design, is pop­u­lat­ed entire­ly with car­i­ca­tures, yet unlike the work by Per­ry and Wolff, Mag­gie is self­less rather than self important.

Despite the game­ness and jovi­al­i­ty of an impres­sive ensem­ble cast, Miller doesn’t dive deep enough when it comes to locat­ing pro­found insight in her char­ac­ters’ psy­ches. The actors are clear­ly hav­ing the time of their lives and, in the moment, their inter­ac­tions are a delight to behold. Plus, the pla­ton­ic dynam­ic between Mag­gie and Tony is won­der­ful­ly observed. What Maggie’s Plan lacks in nuance, how­ev­er, it makes up for with some inspired, invig­o­rat­ing com­ic moments, includ­ing one par­tic­u­lar­ly amus­ing punk-rock cameo.

This film marks a con­tin­u­a­tion of themes orig­i­nal­ly explored in Miller’s pre­vi­ous, The Pri­vate Lives of Pip­pa Lee: the nobil­i­ty of a female’s emo­tion­al jour­ney and the affect that self-sac­ri­fic­ing ways can have on both inner and out­er life.