Ever since he co-wrote The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou alongside director Wes Anderson in 2004, filmmaker Noah Baumbach has alighted on his own productive course. His earlier inconclusive attempts to fit into a version of the romantic comedy template – see 1997’s Mr. Jealousy – have been replaced by a stringent humour that captures the rapacious emotional nourishment of the needy and harmful; he happily makes movies about selfish people. Baumbach takes the supporting characters that might punctuate someone else’s work and makes them his dysfunctional fulcrum.
'I’m fair to middling," Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) says of himself. 'Leonard Maltin would give me two and a half stars." Greying at the temples, Greenberg is a Los Angeles boy returning home on the cusp of 40 after years of exile in New York. A musician turned carpenter, he’s house-sitting for his wealthy, holidaying brother after undergoing a nervous breakdown. Sleeping in a kid’s bedroom and perturbed by the open space of L.A., Greenberg runs on a low wattage that occasionally flares up when his refusal to meet people halfway results in him losing his temper.
Greenberg retreats before strangers and punishes his old friends, and Baumbach shoots his star from odd angles with unkempt hair that emphasise the disdain on his bony face. The usual Stiller comic protagonist is a man with too much confidence who can’t understand who others don’t recognise his achievements, but here, with his energy dialed down by various prescription drugs, he’s far more tentative. He’ll try to establish a connection with someone and then seize upon the wrong opening, instead pushing them away. Greenberg’s former bandmate Ivan (Rhys Ifans) is understanding, but you can sense the panic of his ex-girlfriend, Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who also shares story credit with her writer/director husband), when he suggests they go on a date.
Perhaps because of Leigh, Baumbach also proves to be an informed, expatriate observer of west coast mores. His first shot is the classic view of Los Angeles’ sprawl from the privileged high ground, but here the city sits under a shroud of dank smog (somewhat akin to his protagonist’s personality), while Greenberg’s discomfort with friends of his brother who have visiting rights with the swimming pool could have come from the jittery pages of early Joan Didion.
The counterpoint to Greenberg is Florence (Greta Gerwig), who as his brother’s personal assistant inherits Greenberg. Looking for the validation that comes with love, Florence is emotionally available, but with Greenberg that’s as much a come-on as a turn off. The two, thrown together by caring for a sick family pet and everyday errands, pinball back and forth from fitful sexual encounters to far more involved emotional spats. Gerwig, a graduate of the micro-budget 'mumblecore' movement (Gen Y cultural and emotional inertia), gives an incredibly unaffected performance, that’s not so much being in the moment as just purely being. Baumbach refuses to signal that the two are meant to be together, so the film undulates with their moods, as their quasi-relationship stumbles onwards. It’s clumsy, but convincing.
Trying to apologise to Florence for a heinous rant, Greenberg ends up attacking her. 'I’m apologising for my side of it," he insists, before suggesting that nonetheless she instigated the conflagration due to her own failings. It’s these moments that make Greenberg a bitterly funny movie (and Baumbach’s existing detractors will no doubt throw their hands up in ludicrous disgust once more) and give it a certain momentum. Roger is obviously at a turning point, but the story doesn’t cushion him through a redemptive arc. Like Baumbach’s previous movie, 2007’s Margot at the Wedding, it takes until the final scene for the protagonist to give even a modicum of ground. There’s no easy glow residing in this story, but it’s caustically amusing and emotionally true.
