"There There" - Tribeca Film Fest Review
There There is director Andrew Bujalski’s latest collection of vignettes. The film tells a total of six separate stories, but some of the characters appear in multiple shorts. Each miniature scene is basically a short film within the larger film. The shorts are punctuated by a musical interlude performed by Jon Natchez using a combination of a variety of household objects and actual instruments.
The six stories begin with a man (Lennie James) and a woman (Lili Taylor) who wake up next to each other after spending their first night together. The woman later meets with her Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor (Annie LaGanga) for a cup of coffee. Next, the AA sponsor attends a parent-teacher conference at her son’s school with his teacher (Molly Gordon). Two men (Jason Schwartzman and Avi Nash) debate the ethical obligations of their tech start-up. Finally, the teacher ends up at the bar owned by the man from the first scene.
From the opening scene, it’s clear that There There was shot with all of the characters in isolation. None of the actors are occupying the same space, and while it’s an interesting experiment in terms of filmmaking, this style doesn’t work for the story. It’s jarring to have to pretend that two characters are in the same space when it’s so clearly obvious they’re not together. The scene containing the AA sponsor coffee date is perhaps the most egregious example. The actors are clearly sitting at different tables (one blue, one wooden) in different locations (one by a bright yellow wall, the other by a cabin). The audience tends to focus on these differences rather than the dialogue.
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There are pandemic-made films that use isolation to their advantage. Shudder’s Host is the pinnacle of using isolation filmmaking as a means of advancing the story. The dialogue-heavy scenes of There There don’t work when the two characters are separated, but pretending to be together. 10,000 km is another example of a film where the characters are completely separated and only communicate via technology. The isolation works because 10,000 km is not trying to convince the audience that the two characters are together. There There is missing the chemistry of in-person relationships and conversations. The film’s editing can’t hide the fact that these actors are performing to an empty room.
The most engaging scenes feature Gordon who has consistently been a formidable presence in films. However, the burden of this film’s script and Covid protocols are too much for her to carry on her own.
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