Directed By Jim Rash

Starring – Allison Janney, Andrew Rannells, Bonnie Hunt

The Plot – With a funeral to plan and grieving to be done, a widow (Janney) reaches out to her estranged son. He refuses to come home, choosing instead to send his personal assistant (Rannells) to help make the arrangements. The widow is forced to process her grief in the presence of a complete stranger.

Rated TV-MA

Miss You, Love You | Official Trailer | HBO Max

POSITIVES

Because of my undying love for 2013’s The Way Way Back, I will always carry a deep personal fondness for Jim Rash, especially considering his feature length directorial debut elicited one of my all-time favorite movie characters in Sam Rockwell’s careless slacker, Owen, and while Rash has since gone on to helm 2020’s mightily conflicted Will Ferrell comedy, Downfall, Miss You, Love You is a welcome return to form for the dynamic director, in turn evoking a sensitively tender yet hilariously unfurling two-hander whose simplicity towards dissecting grief and unresolved conflict is among its single most effective attributes in a prominently endearing engagement. Being that its minimized cast includes only six accredited actors, it’s easy to understand that most of the faithful focus persists alongside Janney’s reeling widow and Rannells’ neurotically resolving assistant, with each of them spending a weekend together to not only break the ice of tension between the strangers’ spontaneous merging, but also therapeutically alleviate the wounds of resentment stemming from toxic relationships surrounding the very same source, and considering this requires Rash to work overtime crafting a script that is completely dialogue driven, it enacts these effortlessly indulging conversations between the characters that not only vividly articulates the depth of a lived-in past, without anything even closely resembling heavy-handed or on-the-nose exposition bullet points, but also an ensuing comfort amongst them that earns trust and commonality for these people to unload their baggage with opportunity, in turn maintaining with it the rich balance of aridly dry wit and meticulously elevating drama that Rash has built a foundation upon within his films. That balance speaks volumes to the emotional spontaneity of life that transcends seemingly in the blink of an eye, especially alongside one such darkly depraved joke involving the disappearance of an animal off-screen, but beyond that bestows a lot of anger, remorse, and especially resentment to the detectability of these candid conversations, in ways that maintains pocketed ambiguity in the progress of its long-term outlining, despite so much evidential insight in the continuous truths that set them free. Even when the answers feel painfully evident in where the big reveals will take us, there’s still an element of uncertainty in the molding of characters by Rash that makes the impacts to their vulnerable states feel like the compellingly driving force behind the audience’s curiosity, particularly once a realistically inserted plot device leaves the ease of answers quite literally at the fingertips of its characters, once inevitability has eventually caught up. It certainly helps that the interactions are crafted with an element of alluring magnetism in the cinematography from Daniel Moder, enacting a rich tapestry of handheld and still frame captivity to correspond seamlessly with the riveting and subdued tempos of these many interactions, but it’s made tranquilly serene with Mark Orton’s medley of sedating scores imbedding a gently glowing and affectionate underlining to the depths of its profoundly expansive explorations, with Orton maintaining the same kind of periodic influence over the establishing sequences of the movie, instead of intruding upon the magnitude of decorated performances that carry a lot of the movie’s heavy lifting. On those performances, it’s easy to overlook what Janney and Rannells are doing here, as they carry an authentic naturalism and effortless ease to the dependable deliveries of their portrayals, however each of them are tepidly toeing a minefield of sensitivity that feels like it could destroy them at any given time, despite the air of their mesmerizing personalities supplanting a stoic shield that makes them feel impenetrable. In the hands of a lesser actress, Janney’s Diane could easily fall by the wayside of a disinterested audience, whose only defining characteristic towards her is her crass bitchiness that breaks through as quickly as her opening introduction, but Allison clearly weaponizes the character’s grief as a way to lash out against everyone and everything in her path detracting from her isolated existence, effectively breeding an element of empathy to the character in ways that articulate her environmental disconnect from grief’s frazzled reality, and with Janney unloading the same kind of bluntly dry comedic timing to her automatic assertions, there’s an unforeseen frail vulnerability to her decorated portrayal that makes her the caustically cantankerous protagonist that we need for such a sternly stiff requirement, appraising stinging soul to the surmising of a character who feels like the manifestation of her past regrets. Likewise, Andrew Rannells is a revelation in real-time, not only in effortlessly emulating the peppy anxiousness of his character’s missionary objective, but also Jamie’s grappling with the overbearing realities of his own suppressed buried secrets in the intentions of his untimely arrival, and within the confines of a dynamic shared with Janney that truly requires him to be the straight man to her destructive tendencies, the dynamic duo etch out an affectionately indulging brand of chemistry that evolves to feel parental-to-kin, remaining most prominently persistent in those detached moments away from society, where the house encasing them feels all the more claustrophobically confronting with their inescapability of one another. Lastly, while the ending feels inevitably confrontational and even divisive for half of the audience, I found myself on the beneficial side of its inconsistently distributed resolution, despite so much preconceived chaos and tension firmly established in the planning for this forthcoming funeral. If you’re someone who needs on-screen solutions to every conflict manufactured by films, there’s a good chance that you will take issue with where Rash eventually leaves our characters, but in attempting to emulate life’s complexities, you also have to understand that clarity and contentment aren’t built for immediacy, and because of such the three day scope that outlines the movie’s structure comes with a bit of a caveat in these conflicts outrunning the movie’s 92-minute grasp, but not one that necessarily detracted from the kinds of honest and authentic characters and journeys that Rash abides by.

NEGATIVES

On the subject of that overarching runtime and inescapable inevitabilities, while the dialogue devours in the best and most compelling ways imaginable, it’s not quite enough to keep the engagement from ultimately overstaying its welcome, particularly once outsider characters are introduced into the fray by intruding upon the tension mustered effectively by the masterful performances of its duo of protagonists. For my money, the film could’ve simply been contained to a single stage setting involving just these two characters and their commonality for resentment, but the need to plan for a funeral requires them to branch out to flower shops and church’s, in order to illustrate the deceased’s unshared connection to community with his wife, and while it undeniably gives us a firmer grasp of these characters, it feels like these are the moments when the pacing and progression of the narrative eventually catches up with its simplistic structure, leaving the last half hour of the movie lingering longer than everything that came before it, while wasting away a strangely unconventional performance from Bonnie Hunt in its wake. While Hunt certainly isn’t the advertised lead, she has made a decorated career off of articulating these wildcard supporting characters known for stealing a scene or two from the films she accompanies, but the conservative stuffiness of her character combined with the lack of opportunity for her to stand out, allows little in the way of noteworthy influence to Hunt’s casting, and considering it feels so different when compared to anything else she’s previously attempted, I regret that the material allowed very little opportunity for her to capably stand out. Finally, even as the film constantly entertains throughout its creative outline, it’s incapable of effectively evading predictability from answers that feel glaringly evident as quickly as the movie’s opening act, as a result of the script’s overindulgence of excessive backstory arcs that unintentionally show its hand before the movie has a chance to. While the cold corpse is obviously the vitally important link that brings Diane and Jamie together, the more he’s included in the talking points of the conversations, the more it unknowingly telegraphs where it’s eventually heading with its character evolutions, and while Rash undeniably crafts a compelling uncertainty within the interactions of two strangers without a previously established precedent between them, too much transparency in the unearthing of character memories proves that the department of Rash’s longtime writing partner, Nat Faxon could’ve went a long way in maintaining the uncertainty of what transpired.

OVERALL
Miss You, Love You is a delicately deconstructive two-hander of a devastating drama from Jim Rash, whose intimately insightful interactions not only uncover the toxic confinement of emotional resentment, but also a duo of dazzling performances from Allison Janney and Andrew Rannells, who bare their souls candidly in the vulnerabilities of their respective characters. Despite the film’s mileage varying in the extent of its challenging runtime, the stirring sentiment still persists in the remedying of its instinctual messaging, cementing a claustrophobically captivating return to form for Rash

My Grade: 7.9 or B