Mutual Appreciation

Reality Would Be Nice: An Appreciation of Mutual Appreciation
by Chris Fujiwara

Mutual Appreciation
Directed and written by Andrew Bujalski. With Justin Rice, Rachel Clift, Andrew Bujalski. A Goodbye Cruel Releasing release. 109 minutes. At the Brattle.

Recently, on WBUR's On Point, I heard Harvard conservative Harvey Mansfield plug a book he has written in praise of "manliness," a trait he finds embodied today in Donald Rumsfeld. I'd like to hear what Mansfield would say about Mutual Appreciation , Andrew Bujalski's superior follow-up to his excellent directorial debut, Funny Ha-Ha. Not only does a key scene show the hero, at the suggestion of three women he has just met at a party, put on a wig, a dress, and eye shadow; Mutual Appreciation is perhaps the fullest exposition yet filmed of a set of cultural attitudes and behaviors that brings the blood of Mansfield and his ilk to boil. They might find the film instructive.

The character that John Wayne, a Mansfield-approved male, plays in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon takes as his mantra the phrase "Never apologize, it's a sign of weakness." No Waynes, the men in Mutual Appreciation always apologize. Early in the film, Alan (Justin Rice), who has just moved from Boston to New York and hopes to get his career as a musician on track, explains to the DJ (Seung-Min Lee) who takes him home that his nervousness before her advances is the result of a "congenital tremor." His long-time friend, Lawrence (Bujalski), does an aw-shucks reaction when a woman (Pamela Corkey) who wants to cast him for a performance piece says she's seeking "compelling guys, interesting men." (He gives her what he calls "a tentative yes," which is these people's characteristic mode of affirmation.) Self-deprecation is not an exclusively male trait in Mutual Appreciation: Lawrence's girlfriend, Ellie (Rachel Clift), confesses to Alan her feeling that when the three are together, she is an intruder, and that the two men share "a secret code."

Introducing his songs to a prospective drummer (Kevin Micka), Alan seems to apologize for their simplicity. He later describes his sound as "kind of pop - concise, catchy, upbeat" - and the way he says them conveys his awareness that for many, these words are pejoratives. It comes as a surprise, then, how confident and energetic he is in his New York debut performance (at Brooklyn's Northsix): to put over his Billy Bragg-like material, he's cultivated a stage persona that includes wire-rims and a slight British accent.

Alan reverts post-gig to his usual passive manner, but the strange awkwardness that has been the film's keynote becomes threatening: there's a sense that something unknown could break out; there's also a sharper pinpointing of the problems with the ambiguity that's a way of life for the people in the film. Here is where Bujalski excels. "I'm not sure where we are," Alan says during an uncomfortable visit to the apartment of a stranger who saw his gig. It's one of the key metaphors of a film that's all about several kinds of uncertainty and placelessness.

As Alan reveals his discontent and loneliness, and Ellie acknowledges that she's attracted to him, a layer of honesty is reached, but the great power of the film lies in its refusal to settle for this layer as essence or transcendence. "I'd like to talk about real things with you;... reality would be nice," she says to him during what, in another kind of film, could be a moment of truth. Mutual Appreciation takes in a realm of possibilities: it shows life as contingent, conditional, enigmatic, never finally realized, as, in short, everything that the Harvey Mansfields of the world abhor, and it shows why to accept this kind of life is an act of strength.

Originally published in an altered version in The Boston Phoenix, September 15, 2006.

Chris Fujiwara: Mostly on Film