Landline (Dir. Gillian Robespierre) Movie Review

Landline: A Story of Infidelity, Hilarity, and Cord Phones   

When most people think of historical fiction, they think the olde english of Shakespeare or the Victorian storytelling of Jane Austen or the harrowing anecdotes of a World War. Gillian Robespierre thinks the ’90s.

Her second feature deals with a rebellious high school senior circa 1995 (Abby Quinn) who discovers letters detailing what seems like her beloved father’s (John Turturro) on-going affair. Scared to hurt her stern mother (Edie Falco) she confides in her twenty-something sister (Jenny Slate), who, as luck would have it, is entangled in an affair of her own.

Martial affairs constituting the central conflict for a film is nothing new to Hollywood, and almost a cliche when it comes to the independent scene. Robespierre, from the get go, had a difficult task making this story seem fresh and worthy of our attention within a sea of similarly themed movies, and she knew it.

So instead of over-complicating the film with different sub-plots or attempting to overcompensate for the potential public perception, Robespierre leaned heavily on her unique cinematic perceptive. And to great success. The movie feels authentic and unique when it comes it’s inter-personal relationships, a Robespierre Trademark. It’s clear in her films, (and even before in her shorts) that she’s borrowing from and playing on relationships in her own life, an element that lends to a quirky and deeply personal viewing experience. In Landline, specifically, it adds depth and interest to characters faced with an obstacle we’ve seen on screen dozens of time.

Robespierre, who previously wrote and directed the Sundance darling “Obvious Child”, also utilizes her knack for finding comedy in the movie’s more serious moments and doing so without minimizing the drama or emotion behind it. This is a trait best exemplified in her first cinematic outing, the aforementioned “Obvious Child”, a picture that dealt with a flailing comedian’s decision to get an abortion and the subsequent conflicting emotions. Both movies expertly use their tense moments for hilarious comedic fodder, (In “Landline”, the lewd letters are used as the butt of many of a joke while “Obvious Child” makes abortion the topic of most of it’s stand-up sets) while still managing to feel emotionally authentic.

Robespierre’s limited filmography has already presented audiences with numerous emotionally taut scenes and memorably funny moments. Landline, no exception to that, is able to expertly juggle both emotions, never allowing one to overshadow the other. It’s comedic moments are funny and dramatic moments impactful, while the combination and juxtaposition of both gives the film a unique feel.

Another element that sets this movie apart from others in the sub-genre, is it’s acting. Turturro turns in an admirable performance as more-or-less the movie’s antagonist, capturing your sympathy with only a couple of understated character moments. Abby Quinn, turns in a wonderfully moody performance as the family’s youngest daughter, while also managing to capture the often bottled-up love and admiration teenagers feel towards their parents. Jenny Slate, who many have proclaimed “Robespierre’s muse”, produces most of the movie’s laughs while also turning in an idiosyncratic performance of a deeply unsure bride-to-be. The fantastic Edie Falco, really supplies the heart of the movie, playing the victim with grace and theatrical maturity.

As exemplified by these complex performances, Landline is about the inherent humanity of our ways. How we blunder and often make choices in our immediate interest as opposed to ones that better suit us in the long run. The movie presents us with a family of deeply-flawed characters yet never once passes judgement, instead it challenges us to be more accepting of them and reflexively of ourselves.

At the end of the day, we’re all just people. We’ll screw up. We’ll hurt those around us. We’ll act impulsively. All that simply, because we aren’t perfect.

The central message of “Landline” is strive to forgive, not only other people but ourselves. Robespierre’s characters often make mistakes, but that never leaves them branded with a “Scarlet Letter” or banished from the focus of the movie. Those mistakes lead to reflection and introspection and action, often not that in order and often very poorly. Because, as the film argues, even our attempts to clean after our imperfections, are ultimately gonna be just that: imperfect. 

We shouldn’t have to live in the shadows of our shortcomings as long as we strive to rectify them. Nor should we keep beating ourselves up for what we’ve already done.  The inclination to do just that is deeply human, while the film’s insistence that we don’t have to, is deeply comforting.

Error, regret, redemption are all at the core of this movie and are all unequivocally relatable. I believe that overlap is what makes “Landline”, and by extension most of Robespierre’s work, linger and resonate.