LGM Film Club, Part 552: Fantasy Life

Matthew Shear is an actor whose been in quality productions for the last decade, going back to a major role in Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America. His new film, Fantasy Life, is his debut and it shows that he knows everyone he needs to know by this time. Now, he takes on a really underexamined group in American society–neurotic New York City Jews. I know, who’s seen that type portrayed in film before!

Shear plays a law school dropout with serious panic attack and mental health issues. He goes to see his psychiatrist, who is loosely connected with his family. That is Judd Hirsch, who is still working at the age of 91 and still very good. Shear gets hired to babysit his grandkids. His son is Alessandro Nivola, very good at playing a douchebag. Nivola is married to Amanda Peet, who is outstanding here and who helped create the film. She plays a once fairly well known actress who has stopped working due to her massive depression and her own mental health issues. When Nivola gets hired as Warren Haynes’s touring basis (I wonder if they had to run this storyline by Haynes even though he’s not in the movie), she hires Shear as a nanny, or manny as it were. They develop a sorta romance but not really that totally blows up thanks to Shear staying stupid things to the kids and Nivola being a huge asshole on his return.

Note: Bob Balaban plays Peet’s father and he is fucking hilarious as a rich old Jewish finance guy who is a conservative, talks about himself as a minority, and of course thinks Israel is the only thing keeping the furnaces closed, which is a near quote. He’s basically playing it as Alan Dershowitz (whose name gets dropped here) and it’s even a scene in Martha’s Vineyard. Bob Balaban is good in every single role he’s ever had, at least all the ones I’ve seen, which is many.

One other issue–all three kids in this film act like kids, which mean as actors they do exactly what you want them to do. Since I watch a lot of old movies, I note again how absolutely atrocious any child was in a movie from the 30s and 40s, I mean you could pull in someone random off the street and do just as well. It makes me really appreciate modern child acting.

This isn’t a great film–there’s some gaps in understanding intent and the drama never really quite rises to what it could. But the cast is just so good. Shear is fine, playing the nebbish New York Jewish underemployed guy of the 21st century, but Peet (who is also Jewish on her mother’s side) is powerful in this role as an aging actor who refuses to get face work done and who just can’t get over her depression to get back to work. Hirsch, Balaban, Zosia Mamet, and the rest of the supporting cast are really very good. So it’s just pleasant to watch excellent actors work with a good enough script to make it worthwhile.