A failure to connect
Undeveloped characters plague uncompelling Landline
Having characters make mistakes doesn’t necessarily lead to a complicated story, nor does it necessarily generate interest. In Gillian Robespierre’s latest film, Landline, character development is traded in for good people who do bad things, missing the mark on nuance and leaving us instead with an unlikeable film.
Landline is set in 1995 (which lends nothing to the film) and follows the Jacobs family. Dana (Jenny Slate) is engaged to Ben (Jay Duplass), whose character can be described as boring, a bad lover and nothing else. Anxious for the future and unsatisfied in her relationship, Dana cheats on Ben. At the same time, Dana’s teenage sister Ali (Abby Quinn) finds out that their father, Alan (John Turturro), has been cheating on their mother, Pat (Edie Falco). Dealing with ruptures in the family and confusion over what they really want in life, the three Jacobs women work through their relationships. Sort of.
As a whole, Landline is too slight. Dialogue is predictable and trite. Humour is meagre, leaning too hard on 1990s nostalgia. Emotionally charged sex scenes are cringeworthy. But in such a character-driven film, the biggest problem is the characters themselves.
Pat suffers the most. We know she likes Hillary Clinton’s fashion, and is generally cold, but, like Ben, she is barely a character and so the emotional turmoil of her partner’s betrayal never coalesces. Dana fares only slightly better. We have a sense of her fears, but Slate is hammy, whether portraying Dana as comically square or attempting to hit the emotions of love, remorse and uncertainty.
Quinn as Ali stands out, both for her performance and for being the only character who feels fully formed. Coming of age amid older people who cannot control their own lives, Ali is a balance of youthful immaturity and precocious wisdom that can only come from being outside of the demoralizing tangle that is adult emotions.
Other than Ali, however, Robespierre’s film is full of lifeless characters who do not merit the psychological intricacies they seem to want. Incredibly flat, it is difficult to discern what drives these people, just as it is difficult to become invested in their stories. Where Landline could have been a sensitive dramedy about characters who are messy, complicated and contradicting in terms of morality, it ends up as an unpleasant film about how a good person can be selfish and cruel yet still be a good person. Infidelity brings characters together, strengthening bonds and reinvigorating relationships, while Landline starves for emotional depth and perspective.