Movie Review: Mutual Appreciation

I was worried when I heard that Andrew Bujalski's second film, Mutual Appreciation, was about a struggling musician trying to make it in New York. I avoid films about painters, novelists, actors, musicians, and filmmakers because they tend to be thinly-vieled metaphors for the filmmaker's own creative struggles. I have been subjected to many the independent film about someone making an independent film. For me, that's too self-referential, too meta. The end result is a film that isn't really about anything at all except itself.

Movies should be about life, about the primal emotions and immediate experiences that are felt by the human animal: love, loss, anger, regret, frustration, depression and happiness. Thankfully, Mutual Appreciation is not about a tortured genius struggling for recognition or grappling with the Creative Process; it is about life, and about people. It's about that special time after college, when Real Life in the Real World is supposed to begin. And sometimes, it's hard to get that Real Life jumpstarted.

This is the territory that Bujalski has laid claim to, both in this film and his debut, Funny Ha-Ha. That film centered around Marnie, a young woman with dubious prospects for the future, both professionally and personally. The central character of Mutual Appreciation, Alan Peoples (Justin Rice), shares Marnie's indecision. He, too, is floating in that ambiguous, undefined place between student and adult.

Alan's friends are defined: Lawrence (played by Bujalski himself) is a teacher's assistant, while Allie (Rachel Clift) works in an office. They are "adults".

In Funny Ha-Ha, some of Marnie's friends get married, and this defines them, makes them important. It's a way they can be reduced and explained. But Marnie cannot be reduced and explained. She's still searching for a pithy way to sum herself up and make herself legit.

Not so with Alan. Alan chooses to define himself as a musician, as a "rock star". He throws himself into this defined space, and most of his relationships revolve around his music: for example, he has a fling with Sara (Seung-Min Lee), a disc jockey, and he makes Lawrence's girlfriend, Allie, his manager.

Late in the film, Allie says that she'd like to have a real conversation with Alan, that she'd like to talk about real things. "It would be insane to try and bring up anytihng besides your career and music, whatever, without feeding you three or four beers first." Allie-- and Bujalski-- realize that Alan wraps himself up in this role, perhaps using it as a defense mechanism.

The best scenes in the film are the ones that threaten or challenge Alan's conception of himself. After a concert, Alan, his psuedo-girlfriend Sara, and his drummer Dennis (Kevin Micka) are invited by Walter (Bill Morrison), who has connections to the music business, to stop by his place for a few beers. Once there, Sara and Dennis focus their attention on their new host and his home. Alan becomes angry, moody, and distant. I don't think this is romantic jealousy at play, since Alan has expressed that he has no real romantic interest in Sara.

I think Alan is used to be the center of attention. He's the musician, he's the witty one; when this role is taken away from him-- when someone else is the focus-- it threatens his very sense of self. If he's not a musician, that what is he? Just another kid floating through life?

This scene is followed by a "party" Alan attends. He shows up late; there are only three people still in attendance, and all of them are women. By virtue of being the only male, Alan again becomes the center of attention. He brightens up and engages in silliness. All the girls are wearing wigs, and so he wants one too. But then he is goaded into switching wigs for a more feminine one; when he goes to look at himself in the mirror, one of the girls follows and begins to apply eye-shadow. Soon, they want him to put on a dress.

It feels silly and spontaneous, the kind of thing that does happen at parties during the waning hours of the night. But it's also something more. It's another challenge to Alan's definition of himself, and in this case it's not a challenge to his rock-star-ness (he is compared to a young David Bowie in this scene) but rather to his masculinity. It's a great scene, emotionally painful and ambiguous, disturbing in a way that makes you feel sympathetic.

This challenge of his gender role is echoed and complemented by a plot thread featuring his friend Lawrence. Lawrence has been asked to participate in a project that involves men reading monologues written by and for women. He's not comfortable with it, but goes through with it, stumbling through the feminine perspective in a beauty of a scene. It is after the actual reading of the monologue that his girlfriend Allie delivers a crushing blow to his masculinity.

If you take away one's concept of their own identity-- if you remove the parameters with which we conduct person-to-person interactions-- what do you have left? Who are we, really? Is there such a thing as an essential self, or are we all playing roles? Is there such a thing as love, or do we play at it? Are even our own emotions to be trusted?

These are some of the questions that floated in my head while I was watching Mutual Appreciation. (Your milleage may vary.) Bujalski is very good at the ambiguous moment, at presenting scenes and emotions that can have various interpetations. All of them (and none of them) are valid, because his films are not so much about things as they are things. They provide an experience that can't-- and shouldn't-- be summed up pithily, just as their protagonists can't be summed up or pinned down.