The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

“Audaciously raw, revealing and excruciatingly funny.” – Isaac Feldberg, RogerEbert.com

Filmmaker Joanna Arnow’s darkly funny debut comedy, which world-premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and is executive produced by Sean Baker (The Florida Project), follows a 30-something New York woman (Arnow) navigating, with often absurd results, her long-term casual BDSM relationship, her low-level corporate job and her quarrelsome Jewish family, all with a defiant shrug. After nearly a decade in a non-exclusive, consensually kinky relationship with a much older and seemingly successful man, Ann begins to take the reins (or at least acknowledge them). This awakening sparks a small blip in her daily existence, leading to increasingly astute and funny vignettes in which each extended pause spurs cringey laughter. With this winningly clever and wry send-up of the absurdity of modern millennial living, writer/director/star Arnow has crafted a brutally honest, deadpan document of the chaos of life in NYC as an apathetic observer to an already sinking ship. (Dir. by Joanna Arnow, 2024, USA, 87 mins., Not Rated)