If there’s something a film produced by the contemporary indie genre must possess, it’s a lost soul. I realized this the same weekend that I realized I had a problem when I could say I had seen three movies in theaters in the span of 24 hours. Oddly enough, however, I felt that I saw three variations of the same story with wildly different results in success — the same story that’s becoming the status quo for “indie” film. And by “indie” I mean in terms of style and tone, not budget.
The first film I saw was an advanced screening of Nicole Holofcener’s new film “Please Help,” which I’ll put on the back burner for now, as the review is coming up in a week or so. Just know that it was about a bunch of wary, young-to-middle-aged women grappling with issues of identity.
Next up was Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg,” a consistently entertaining yet consistently aggravating dark comedy about 40ish-year-old Roger (Ben Stiller) house-sitting his wildly successful brother’s mansion in Los Angeles. Finally, I capped off my movie binge with Bradley Rust Gray’s “The Exploding Girl,” a wispy, breathy tale of Ivy (Zoe Kazan) who’s home in New York for the summer between semesters at a liberal arts school upstate.
Both “Greenberg” and “The Exploding Girl” toss their introspective protagonists in identity limbo for a precise length of time with a clear end date on the horizon. Roger and Ivy rediscover their new, yet familiar surroundings, rekindle old friendships and juggle a potential romance to boot. It’s a textbook fish-out-of-water scheme, yet this sense of returning to old stomping grounds and facing the past in a new, enlightened manner is becoming increasingly essential to the indie genre. Indie audiences love themselves a meandering protagonist who likes good, older music (Roger digs The Cure), wears funky clothes (Ivy frequently dons an ironically granny-chic gray jumper that looks better suited for a retirement home) and has trouble identifying with the rest of their contemporaries (Roger’s married-with-children friends and Ivy’s party-hard, pot head pals).
It’s becoming a familiar plot schematic, but also a masturbatory one. As the credits began to roll at each screening, I decided to take a peek at whom else was in the theater with me, and I can’t say I wasn’t surprised with the results. Hipsters galore. They moped out of the theater like Ivy did as she meandered around Williamsburg in Brooklyn. I even saw that cool Western plaid shirt I couldn’t bring myself to spend the $70 for at Urban. I guess it’s good that they’re educating themselves cinematically, but are these patrons only really there to watch themselves on screen? Sure, film is traditionally a self-reflexive experience, but it seems now more than ever that hipster sensibility, exterior and interiorly speaking, is really shaping the very rubric of the contemporary indie film.
You can reach this columnist at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
