Australian Penthouse

Greenberg

Director: Noah Baumbach
Stars: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Universal Pictures

Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) will make you feel uncomfortable—perhaps even angry.  The too hip, too flip 40-year-old is so far removed from authentic emotion that he exists solely on a superficial level of human interaction where feelings are mere words to be disparaged or dealt out in order to get what you want.  Roger Greenberg sits uncomfortably close to home, because Roger Greenberg lives in us all.

When it comes to cinema, the trick is to make an unlikeable character work on the screen for 2 hours—maintaining audience interest not only in his actions but also in the outcome of his character arc.  Academy Award-nominated screenwriter/director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) pulls this off, finessing emotional lines by examining honestly how crippled emotions, and fear, can affect our lives.

And while Stiller excels as the uptight and distant titular character Roger Greenberg, the heart and soul of the movie lies with Greta Gerwig, in her breakout role as the sweet and naïve Florence.

Florence is a personal assistant to Roger’s brother, Phillip (Chris Messina) and his wife.  When Phillip and his family take a vacation, Roger arrives from New York to house-sit, where he finds himself marooned—in New York nobody drives, but in L.A., without a car, you’re stranded.  And his initial excitement about meeting up with the friends and former lovers he left behind when he took off for the east coast 15 years ago dims as he realises that his friends have moved on while he has stagnated.

At 40, Roger hasn’t had a meaningful relationship in years, his L.A. friends have families and are either married, divorced or enduring painful separations, and his former flame, Beth (Leigh) doesn’t look as fondly on their early-20s relationship (or with as much gravitas) as Roger does.  Roger is unable to connect on a level that doesn’t exist in the past, and it’s because his “present” is bereft of status, of meaning; he is suffering depression that he won’t admit to and he has no partner and no career. Roger feels like the world has changed and left him behind. But within this isolation and denial sits the luminous Florence (Gerwig).

Florence is the opposite of Roger: she is uncertain yet not insecure while Roger is opinionated yet terrified; she is finding her way and open to learning, whereas he is certain he has all the answers and is resistant to change.  Florence lives in a single room studio apartment and sings at open-mike nights, and the soundtrack, by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, is both nostalgic and uplifting, buffering the movie and supporting the film’s message of underlying hope.

Roger’s former best friend and band mate Ivan (Ifans) is a separated father of one, who tries to connect with his former friend, but Roger takes no interest in Ivan’s life as it is now other than to encourage him to dump his wife.  The singularity of Greenberg’s narcissism and self-involvement is painful yet familiar to watch.  We’ve all met people who exist to serve themselves, who are involved only on their terms, who look over your shoulder in case a more exciting conversation companion arrives—it’s not personal, and they’re not malicious; they just can’t care about you as much as they do about themselves.

A pivotal scene involves Ivan and Roger meeting at a restaurant because it is Roger’s birthday. Roger tells Ivan about Florence, and on a whim, invites her to join them for lunch.  But when she arrives, Roger is immediately uncomfortable—one on side is a friend who knows him too well and on the other is a woman onto whom he is projecting an idealised image of himself, so when a trio singing waiters approaches their table with cake, he freaks out. “I don’t want to be one of those L.A. people where it’s all about them!”, he screams.  The irony being that Roger’s entire life has been about him; he has no sense of humour about himself and no perception of what’s real and what isn’t, only of what fits his idealised version of what’s cool and acceptable and what isn’t and therefore ripe for ridicule.

Roger can’t yet accept that now defines who he is, and it’s who you are now that matters, and the interplay between Florence and Roger throughout the film honestly and simply conveys the revelations we all face on the road to finding ourselves.

Greenberg is released in cinemas nationally on July 22