Couples getaway has edgy agenda
The weekend-away-withfriends indie has become a safe testing ground for firsttime feature directors: one (typically pretty) location reduces production stress, while a large cast allows room to discover what works and what doesn’t. In actress Clea DuVall’s debut as writer-director, a four-couple stew called “The Intervention,” there’s little relationship mishigas you haven’t seen before. But as a dryly amusing and sincere look at men and women pondering emotional pivots in their lives, it’s plenty likable.
Bickering parents Ruby (Cobie Smulders) and Peter (Vincent Piazza) don’t know it yet, but the friends they’re sharing a getaway with — perennially engaged duo Annie (Melanie Lynskey) and Matt (Jason Ritter), jealousy-tinged twosome Sarah (Natasha Lyonne) and Jessie (DuVall), and widower Jack (Ben Schwartz), with new girlfriend Lola (Alia Shawkat) — plan to tell them their marriage is over and they should get divorced.
The mirror gets shown to everyone, of course, and while the outcomes are predictable based on each character’s thumbnail sketch, DuVall shows a welcome light touch with tone, easing back and forth between humor and neurosis and never treating her material as the last word on relationships.
There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, either, but the standouts are Lynskey, a fizzy combo of nosy and tipsy, and Smulders, who’s got a magnetic, prickly simmer. “The Intervention.” Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Rating: R, for language including sexual references. Playing: ArcLight Hollywood.