The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

Ann asks Allen the question in the very first scene. It’s an entirely legitimate one, although when she says “Do you think people can change?”, she’s obviously referring to herself. In the lack of any clear response from him, the rest of the film sets about answering the question in his place, although total clarity is lacking there too. We see Ann’s thirty-something life in Brooklyn as a series of discrete episodes, each divided from the other with a drolly abrupt cut: wry observations of sex, work, friendship or family; order irrelevant, repetition unavoidable. Bland office routines, sexual encounters where submission goes hand in hand with awkwardness, amusingly excruciating parent-child dynamics, conversations whose sparks of optimism fizzle and fade. The infectiously off-kilter atmosphere builds and builds, but otherwise all that accumulates along the way is a sense of perfect ambivalence, the same feeling that a new partner eventually puts into words, the feeling that the time for doing something has passed. It’s a more than apt title, and it even answers the opening question, if not directly. “Do you think people can change?” There’s so much space between “no” and “probably not”. (James Lattimer)

Joanna Arnow: EIKO & KOMA: THE RETROSPECTIVE PROJECT (2010), MONTH ONE (2011, K), I HATE MYSELF :) (2013), BAD AT DANCING (2015, K)