Mr. Jealousy (1997)
Noah Baumbach was there for me at a time when he was very much needed. I discovered Baumbach’s first two pictures, Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy, when I was eighteen, a freshman in college, living with a roommate I detested, and working through all the other self-indulgent things young people generally find themselves working through. Baumbach didn’t invent anything with either of these pictures, but he achieved something almost as admirable, he redeemed a genre that’s generally a sitcom: grasping clichés we (especially young men) have to live with and turning them into something palpable and moving. These two pictures owe the usual debts to prior movies that most talented young person’s films have a habit of owing to (French New Wave, Woody Allen) but there’s a current of insecurity in Baumbach’s early films that’s specific to the last few generations, and justifies his playing in a familiar sandbox.
The insecurity being the kind that’s brought on by an aimlessness triggered by a surfeit of options, the illusion that we’re all “unique” and meant to amount to something more impressive or noble than living a life as a normal person (Wes Anderson recruited Baumbach as collaborator on the script for The Life Aquatic, which is appropriate as Anderson captures this youth-fueled discombobulation too, only in a more heightened European by way of Hal Ashby sense, Bottle Rocket, Anderson’s first film, most especially taps this). This illusion can be paralyzing, and while waiting, we find that we’re pushing thirty, forty, and still haven’t really done anything. We pass this or that girl up, possibly because she didn’t promise the specific adventure we had in mind when telling our love story to ourselves, or perhaps we turn down certain jobs or certain cities because we fear they might interfere with an airy outline of a job or opportunity that might happen should we might, might, might, maybe go to grad school, or raise money to make a film, or perhaps persuade a publisher that our collection of short stories is the next generation defining masterpiece.
Mr. Jealousy, Baumbach’s second film, isn’t as strong as Kicking and Screaming, it’s “minor Baumbach” to paraphrase an oft-quoted (around here anyway) character from Squid, but it’s a charming picture, self-conscious (Baumbach seems to include certain references, such as to Sunrise or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, more out of eagerness to prove he’s seen them than in the service of any dramatic or comedic effect) but confident in its slightness. The picture is about an insecure man, now 31, called Lester Grimm (Eric Stoltz), who is currently taking a break from harboring dreams of being a great writer. He’s teaching (of course), hanging out with friends, most prominently Vince (Carlos Jacott, a scene stealer) and dating. A narrator (Baumbach), who will pop in and out throughout the picture, explains to us, briefly, Lester’s dating history, which is, logically and unavoidably, a chicken and egg extension of his general self-loathing. Lester always believes girls are cheating on him, is always convinced he’s the least impressive person they’ve been with, thus effectively ensuring that they always cheat on him, and that he’s the least impressive person they’ve been with. Lester is not oblivious to this self-fulfilling irony, but his awareness is of no use to him beyond further self-justification.
Lester soon meets, through Vince and his fiancée (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Ramona (Annabella Sciorra). Ramona appears to be ready made for Lester (as they always initially), she’s beautiful, works in a museum (encouraging an interest in culture and the arts that compliments Lester’s film buffery) and has a certain endearing clumsiness. Ramona is a woman of the movies, a woman blessed with a man’s ideal looks and approachability, with just enough eccentricity to be interesting without irritating (Baumbach wouldn’t be too generous with his women, really, until Margot). Lester has the usual issues, but he’s managing, courting inner growth, until Ramona reveals that she used to date Dashiell Frank (Chris Eigeman), an acclaimed writer their age who has been heralded by critics as “the voice of his generation.” Lester, after a few episodes that manage to be more convincing than they’d sound if I were to recall them to you, decides to join Frank’s group therapy, which, in a nice touch, is led by director, actor and film-historian patriarch Peter Bogdanovich (I wish he’d act more, he has an instantly credible onscreen elder-statesman sanity that is only rivaled by fellow director Sydney Pollack).
This is a promising situation for farce, and I’d be curious to see what the present day Baumbach, with the searing death-ray barbs of Squid and Margot, would do with it. The ultimate problem and (simultaneous) chief appeal of Mr. Jealousy is that it does nothing with the situation. This frustrates because part of us senses that Baumbach has a New Age screwball comedy in him, a neo-ironic picture that emulates the distant past pictures in wit but otherwise invents its own specific to present society rules; for once, perhaps, a modern screwball picture that wouldn’t feel like a tour through a condemned factory (a problem with a few of the Coens’ attempts at screwball, and it looked like it was a problem with Leatherheads).
This dead-end has its happy surprises though, it lends Mr. Jealousy an unexpected warmth and leisure; it’s refreshing to see a modern comedy so uninterested in actually making you LAUGH OUT LOUD. The picture is talky, and awkward, but you never fault it, the awkwardness, in fact, ultimately contributes to the picture’s truthfulness and ungainly empathy with its hero. It doesn’t hurt either that Eric Stoltz is terrific, Lester is probably his surest, most charismatic performance; and Eigeman, playing a purposeful cliché (he’s that maddening asshole who writes a best-seller by 25 and rues his inability to cat around with more discrimination) is nearly as good. Lester and Dashiell become unexpected friends, and my other regret of Mr. Jealousy is that it doesn’t pursue this avenue more aggressively. Lester’s romance with Romana is sweet, but bland. Baumbach is nothing if not self-aware enough, read in film criticism enough, to grasp that undefined women are a common thread in many young men’s films, and he seeks to address that, but he would have been better advised to stick to another cliché of the young writer, “write what you know”.
The ending finds Lester having finally written something he’s proud of, a play that’s (surprise, surprise) based on the events we’ve just seen. Lester, apparently more confident in himself, sees Ramona one more time, and the picture assures us of the usual ending (though it doesn’t show it) but I wanted to know where Lester exactly stood with Dashiell, they have a final toe to toe reckoning themselves, but they both seem unable to understand that they may be the true font of one another’s hopes and ambitions, which could, perhaps, might, maybe, might, perhaps yield a play about a book about a man writing a play about a man who finally realizes just to plain, simple, fucking, drop it and be.
★★★
