by Brendan Foley
There may be no more (justifiably) maligned subgenre of film than the modern romantic comedy. While there are dozens of classic films that beautifully capture the honest intricacies of love and intimacy with humor and insight, there are an incalculable number of horrific dregs that extol the most idiotic stereotypes of gender, sexuality, and race, all tied up in sitcom plotting and bullshit moralizing.
The “romantic comedy” has so often become a dumping zone for brain-dead foolishness that sometimes the most momentous thing a filmmaker can do is take the prescribed narrative beats and find something fresh and human within the familiarity.
Leslye Headland’s Sleeping with Other People, now available on home media, does not pack a great many twists and turns that you won’t see coming. Most every character is cut from a familiar rom-com archetype, played by an actor who has most likely at some point played the same sort of character in this same sort of movie (Jason Mantzoukas shows up, essentially playing the ‘real’ version of the role he played in They Came Together, an underappreciated spoof from a few years back that burnt the romantic comedy to the ground and pissed on the ashes).
But Headland as director and screenwriter knows full well that you can anticipate where she is going with this story, and she uses that familiar framework as a jumping off point to delve into matters of human intimacy and romance with real insight and real weight.
As the movie opens up, Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey (Alison Brie) have a chance meeting in a college dorm room. Their talk turns towards sex and it comes out that they are both virgins. Having settled that particular bit of business, the two drift away never to see each other again until over a decade later when they run into each other at a sex addiction meeting.
Quickly establishing a friendship, the two make a pact that they will help each other through their turbulent periods, with sex as an absolute no-go. They even go so far as to develop a safe word that they can deploy whenever sexual tension starts to mount up. Together, they hope to move past their failings and maybe become better people.
And make no mistake: Both of these people have tremendous failings. And not in a charming, she’s-so-clumsy, he’s-so-absent-minded, aren’t-we-adorable traditional romantic comedy way. Jake and Lainey are fuck ups, people who are both damaged possibly to their cores, and who inflict damage on a great many people.
For Jake, much as he enjoys the company of women, he’s terrified of vulnerability and would rather blow up a relationship and be the bad guy then dig into something real. He’s sharp-witted and charming enough to get what he wants, but the moment things start to go further than that, he bails. Sudeikis has built a comedy career out of playing characters who play as beyond reprehensible on the page, but always carrying it off with his innate likability and that vague aura of sadness he can call upon. Hire a Bradley Cooper or someone like that, and the audience spends the entire running time hoping that someone castrates the prick, but Sudeikis keeps you firmly in Jake’s corner.
It helps that Sudeikis is a naturally funny performer, hitting his punchlines with deadly accuracy. And when it comes time for Jake to let his guard down, Sudeikis nails those moments too. If Sudeikis ever wanted to stop focusing on comedy, I’ve no doubt he’d become a beloved character actor fulfilling whatever role a director needed (I guess he is starring in that new Jesse Owens movie coming out soon. Not as Jesse Owens, though, that would be weird).
Alison Brie, meanwhile, is the kind of talent that could crush just about any role she’s given. Before Community, I’d never even heard of Brie, but I walked away from the show convinced she was a movie star in training.
Sleeping with Other People represents the first time someone has given her almost the full weight of a film to carry, and Brie pulls it off with aplomb. Lainey is not an easy role, and it demands an actress with stellar comic timing, dramatic range, and the fearlessness to be absolutely unlikable when the moment calls for it.
And Lainey certainly goes to some dark places. We’re introduced to her mid-meltdown, hammering on a boy’s door and screeching for him at the top of her lungs. A decade later, Lainey is still hung-up on that same guy (now played by Adam Scott in the douchiest role he has ever played [and yes, I have seen Step Brothers]), and that inability to let go has left her life in pieces. He’s a (married) doctor expecting his first child, and he treats her like absolute dog-shit. Yet as much as Lainey recognizes how absolutely wrong everything is about this situation, she can’t bring herself to tear away from him.
As heavy as some of this material is, Headland wisely loaded the cast with comedy heavyweights and gave them room to play. Sudeikis and Brie have instantaneous chemistry, and both tear into the filthiest, rowdiest material with gusto. There’s an extended set-piece during which the two attend a children’s birthday party while strung out on ecstasy, and Headland keeps finding new punctuation marks for the pair’s loopiness.
Mantzouksa, Andrea Savage, and Natasha Lyonne score major laughs from the sidelines, while quick moments with folks like Adam Brody and Billy Eichner also keep things humming along.
But beyond all the comedy and filthy punchlines (and it should be noted that Sleeping with Other People is as hilariously blunt about sex as anything I’ve seen since that one gym teacher demonstrated masturbation for us on a banana) what Sleeping with Other People gets right are the feelings and details of intimacy, something that so few films have the patience to even attempt to capture any more.
And it’s not just that the movie deals in a great deal of sex (no nudity though, for either gender). Sometimes in your life you find yourself in close proximity with someone who just stone-cold has your number, and when they look at you it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or where you are. They can look at you as if every nook and cranny of your being is theirs to know and keep. When you meet a person like that, there’s an electricity that is so incredibly exhilarating and liberating…but also so insanely terrifying.
Headland gets this, and her script and her camera capture it beautifully. When Jake and Lainey set aside the bullshit and really begin to get a handle on just much they have come to mean to each other, and just how vulnerable that leaves them, neither one is fully prepared and the choices they make may make audience members tear their hair out in frustration. Neither character is by any means ‘fixed’ by the end of the film, but they reach a place where they are able to take a leap and not be dominated by the insecurities and fears that had so defined their adult lives.
Sleeping with Other People is the kind of low-key, adult picture that we always complain the studios don’t make anymore. Here’s hoping Headland has many more opportunities to make films like it.