The Boy Downstairs

We’ve all been there. It’s per­haps one of the most relat­able and ick­i­ly awk­ward sit­u­a­tions you could ever imag­ine: acci­den­tal­ly mov­ing into a swish, airy, high-ceilinged Brook­lyn apart­ment only to dis­cov­er that your ex boyfriend is shacked up with his new squeeze down there in the base­ment. His head is lit­er­al­ly just under­neath your feet. And what to do when you bump into them both? How to act? What to say? And – hey – wasn’t the whole point of this new room­ing arrange­ment to get as far away from this guy as is phys­i­cal­ly possible?

The gasp­ing­ly awful and ridicu­lous­ly con­trived set-up of this light­ly com­ic debut fea­ture by Sophie Brooks makes it dif­fi­cult for any of its ideas and emo­tions to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. As char­ac­ters con­verse, as sit­u­a­tions unfold, as old feel­ings whee­dle their way back to the present, there’s always the nag­ging thought: why the hell did she move in above her old boyfriend? Why would some­one do that? And it’s not even some depop­u­lat­ed rus­tic burg with lim­it­ing board­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. It’s the bustling metrop­o­lis of New York City.

Zosia Mamet plays dit­sy Diana, an unlucky-in-love writer who is back in the US after a short stint in Lon­don and on the prowl for new chal­lenges start­ing a new ​“chap­ter” of her life. Like most roman­tic come­dies of this ilk, it rides on a brand of cheap design­er cyn­i­cism where most of Diana’s quips or sil­ly jokes are met with stone-faced dis­tain from the peo­ple with whom she inter­acts. Estate agents, it turns out, don’t have a sense of humour. Mamet tries as hard as she can in what is a fair­ly thank­less lead role, but the mate­r­i­al often doesn’t match up to her deter­mi­na­tion to make this char­ac­ter feel real and relatable.

As the sto­ry plays out, we dis­cov­er that she is still warm for her ex-boyfriend’s form, but needs to keep a cool front lest he’s not up for rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing. It’s made all the more dis­tress­ing by the fact that she was the one who broke it off with bespec­ta­cled, sen­si­tive Ben (Matthew Shear) orig­i­nal­ly, and now she is also won­der­ing if it was the right deci­sion to make. With her life in some­thing of a mild tail­spin, was this rela­tion­ship the one thing that kept her anchored to real­i­ty, and happiness?

Visu­al­ly, the film sel­dom offers any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly tan­ta­lis­ing, instead soak­ing up the insipid whites, greys and creams of the afford­able design­er décor of the loca­tions and smart-casu­al cos­tumes worn by the char­ac­ters. There are signs that Brooks knows how to put a film togeth­er, and even though this one nev­er real­ly gets off the ground, it’s still a valiant first effort.