How Patti Harrison and Ed Helms’ Comedy Together Together Shatters Gender Norms
4 out of 5 stars.
Can one craft a love story without crossing over into actual romantic territory? With surrogacy comedy Together Together, director and writer Nikole Beckwith flips the romcom narrative to create a poignant tale of intimacy, all while giving the finger to traditional gender roles.
Premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year, Beckwith’s sophomore feature stars comedian Patti Harrison and The Hangover actor Ed Helms. They bring their quirks and comedic timing to the movie, but also a dramatic depth that will come as a pleasant surprise to some of their fans. The two protagonists thrive in Together Together’s bittersweetness, sharing better chemistry than most onscreen couples, but it’s not the romantic kind we’re talking about.
26-year-old Anna (Harrison) is trying to figure out what the next step in her life might be when she agrees to be the gestational surrogate for Matt (Helms), a straight man in his 40s looking to become a dad. Like the users on Loner—an app Matt designed to allow people to take a peek into others’ lives without ever interacting with them—the two protagonists are on the outside of their existences looking in.
These two strangers are brought together by one of the most visceral experiences there is. The film is cleverly divided into three acts, one per trimester during pregnancy. As Anna’s baby bump starts to show, she slowly accepts to let her guard down and embraces Matt’s overly excited, optimistic nature. Despite the age gap, these two lone wolves strike a platonic friendship that defies all heteronormative pressures and prompts an honest conversation on love and loves.
There have been a few fertility comedies throughout the years. While they attempted to explore the struggles of single parenting, some did so in an appalling manner—namely, 2010 was the year of Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez starring in flimsy comedies that were forgettable at best, problematic at worst. In Aniston-starring The Switch, someone thought it was a good idea to pitch a movie—an adaptation from Jeffrey Eugenides’ short story Baster — whose core is a gross violation of consent. Even worse, someone else thought it was a good idea to finance it. Lopez’s The Back-up Plan, on the other hand, isn’t very good nor remarkable and solely relies on JLo’s star power. Tragically, both seem to suggest that raising a kid on one’s own is the least desirable option and needs fixing via marriage.
Together Together is both riveting and thoughtful in the way it handles aloneness in such a scenario. Anna and Matt often discuss the importance of setting boundaries and also see a therapist (a quietly hilarious Tig Notaro), developing different ways to deal with the implications of surrogacy. Anna has an understandably detached attitude towards the baby she’s carrying, a.k.a. Lamp, as she affectionately calls it. Matt is just a pure concentrate of hope and anticipation, unfazed even when he inevitably faces the double standards on parenting. From books to help groups, it seems as if no one thought that a single, straight man might want to start a family.
Perceiving parental instinct as something connected to gender is just one of the residual patriarchal conventions that Together Together obliterates. The film tackles period stigma, pro-choiceness, and slut-shaming with naturalistic, conversational flair akin to that of the Before movie trilogy by Richard Linklater, one that never feels contrived. And it’s also delightfully self-aware. Beckwith’s movie knows that it’s no less of a romcom than its heteronormative forebears. It plays on some of the most classic romcom situations and stylistic choices, including using the same title design font of Woody Allen’s movies, which Anna then proceeds to roast in a scene for the ages.
Recognizing Together Together’s relationship with its predecessors in the genre is crucial to understand its power. Ultimately, this is a movie about love. The fact that the undeniable spark between Anna and Matt is purely platonic doesn’t lessen the film’s romantic tone. If anything, it helps normalize caring about different types of love, and grieving them, too. After all, a friend breakup might hurt just as bad as a dying romance, as Anna’s friend Jules (Julio Torres) points out.
Yet, in a moviescape saturated with monogamous meet-cutes and marriage proposals, the space for platonic romantic comedies has been quite limited. Alongside 2019’s Straight Up and the recent Language Lessons, 2014’s musical comedy Begin Again is an interesting example of a platonic pair taking center stage. Keira Knightley’s singer-songwriter Greta and Mark Ruffalo’s producer Dan bond over their love of music and New York. The film, by John Carney, toys with the possibility of them ending up together, but wisely chooses not to cross that line to focus on something perhaps more crucial than love: self-love. Greta and Dan pour their energies into starting over and producing a record, a work of art that is ultimately hers. Similarly, in Together Together, Anna and Dave cooperate to welcome Lamp, discovering something about themselves in the process.
Beckwith opts for the perfect epilogue in a movie that is a small revolution in its own regard. A perceptive story about endemic loneliness, platonic love, and parenthood, Together Together also ushers in a paradigm shift in how we talk about gender in pregnancy comedies and beyond. The film challenges the obsession with finding out a baby’s sex and all assumptions that someone’s gender has to do with biology.
“You won’t feel any less of a connection with Lamp just because you didn’t find out the sex ahead of time,” Anna tells Matt during an ultrasound appointment.
These words take on an even greater relevance since they’re delivered by Harrison, who is trans. As an offscreen Lamp wails its way into the world in the finale, the camera zeroes in on Anna’s exhausted post-labor face. Seeing a trans actress in that role throws a crucial brick against all barriers excluding trans artists and urges others in the industry to do better.
Together Together is in select cinemas now and will be released on digital on May 11.
(image: Bleecker Street)
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