Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) are a thirtysomething couple enjoying an almost absurdly romantic weekend upstate. They’re singing in the car (she’s Dolly, he’s Kenny), making out in the lake and enjoying a candle-lit dinner outside (he made scallops!), all the while learning more about each other. It’s intriguingly unclear just how long they’ve been together with exposition unusually minimal as the scene is set. Shouldn’t he or she know this already? Just how in love are these two?
It’s at least clear that they’re still incredibly, at times uncontrollably, horny for each other and when they happen upon some BDSM gear, they decide to indulge. A sex game then leaves Isaac chained to the bed just as we discover just what stage their relationship is at: Iris thinks they’re exclusive but Isaac isn’t really looking for anything serious …
It’s the kind of clever set-up that could have led to either an awkwardly edgy dark comedy or a full psycho-thriller. Iris’s initial outrage is embarrassingly identifiable for many of us who have also felt deceived by the cruel chasm between someone’s actions and someone’s intentions. Why would Isaac say these things and act this way if he was just fooling around? The initial fallout is wonderfully uncomfortable and then rather sad, pitched just right by a hollowed-out Gordon, and the script is smart enough not to turn Isaac, charmingly played by Lerman, into an easy villain. But while the film does happen upon a real, and painful, truth of the problems that come from dating without a label, as things start to devolve, it becomes harder to understand how they ever found themselves here (would someone so resistant to commitment and the guilt associated with heartbreak really mastermind such an idyllic weekend away with someone who is clearly eager for much more?).
Writer-director Sophie Brooks, who also came upon a similarly smart set-up in her similarly stretched 2017 debut The Boy Downstairs, crafted the idea during Covid and it’s clearly a film born from the restrictions of that period. It mostly takes place between an unravelling Gordon and a terrified Lerman although they are later joined by friends hoping to diffuse the situation: the usually very funny Geraldine Viswanathan and Search Party’s often rather one-note John Reynolds. Things then start to get silly far too soon and what had been a horribly squirmy and relatable situation soon descends into poorly staged and increasingly tedious farce as characters scream, panic, plot and, gulp, cast spells.
Brooks isn’t able to find a way to gracefully go back and forth, from the real to the ridiculous, and she loses sight of Gordon’s character whose aching need to be loved and accepted disappears into a screeching, sitcom version of Kathy Bates in Misery, all nuance and empathy gone. The decision to crank so much of the film up to an 11 drowns out any shred of insight and it also becomes uncomfortable for Gordon, whose innate scrappy charm and low-key comic abilities are not enough for something that starts to require something so incredibly outsized. To her credit, it’s the kind of huge, go-for-broke ask that most actors would struggle with (one can see rare talents like Kate Hudson or Goldie Hawn maybe pulling it off) but it feels like a disservice to what she can do to force her into things she can’t.
The film is never sure just how far to push her and how much we’re supposed to still be on her side or at least still believe her as a real person over an exaggerated movie construct. There’s a last-act attempt to try to equate behaviours that really shouldn’t be equated in an overly neat, lessons-have-been-learned wrap-up and a smarter, less eager to amuse, film could have found a better way to leave us with something more reflective or knotty to chew on. But with goofy, and hard-to-buy, outlandishness taking precedence, it means we’re too ready to go from hi to bye.
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Oh, Hi! is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution
English (US)