Tribeca 2014: Ashley Hinshaw's 'Goodbye to All That' Review

Goodbye to All That: Tribeca Review

The Bottom Line

A surprisingly sexy tale of emotional rebuilding.

Venue

Tribeca Film Festival, World Narrative Competition

Cast

Paul Schneider, Melanie Lynskey, Audrey Scott, Anna Camp, Heather Graham, Heather Lawless, Ashley Hinshaw, Michael Chernus, Amy Sedaris, Celia Weston

Director-Screenwriter

Angus MacLachlan

Paul Schneider plays a man reeling from an unexpected divorce in the directorial debut of "Junebug" scribe Angus MacLachlan.

NEW YORK — In his first film as a director, Junebug screenwriter Angus MacLachlan goes back to North Carolina for the story of a man blindsided by divorce. Paul Schneider shines in the role, stumbling through a dating world that has changed since his character got hitched, thanks mostly to social media. His turn is a fine fit for the seriocomic spirit of a picture that, while less distinctive than the earlier film, should have little trouble connecting with viewers beyond the fest circuit.

Schneider's Otto Wall is an avid runner who can barely cross a room without tripping on something. After he's injured in an ATV accident, his daughter Edie (Audrey Scott) asks mom Annie (Melanie Lynskey), "Why do these things always happen to Daddy?" "Because he doesn't pay attention" is the reply.

While Otto comes across as a very caring husband and father, clearly the film agrees with Annie's diagnosis. Otto is flabbergasted when she announces she wants a divorce — or, rather, when her therapist (Celia Weston) does, in a comically infuriating scene. The break is official before he can even process it, but a Facebook-enabled discovery that Annie had been cheating helps Otto get comfortable with the idea of dating new women.

Every divorce should be this hard: With seemingly no effort online, Otto has soon connected with three different beauties who want nothing from him but sex. (One of the women goes haywire later, but what's a breakup without a hot rebound fling with a manic-depressive?) While he certainly enjoys himself, though, Otto's confused by the lack of interest in deeper connections -- something MacLachlan clearly sees as tied to our present mode of friending. His need for something grounded is more pressing in light of his relationship with Edie, who is growing distant for reasons he can't peg.

Some of those have to do with Annie, and MacLachlan manipulates us a bit in order to make us blind in the same ways Otto has been: Otto's ex behaves with such cold self-absorption, kicking him out of his home and then expecting him to make everything easy for her, that we can't help but long for a showdown in which he makes her see how awful she's being. The film pointedly denies us this gratification, and eventually suggests we were wrong to want it -- that although we never witnessed his failures in the relationship, they were real, and his job now is to grow instead of vent his anger.

From this stance, even the most interesting of Otto's love interests — an old summer-camp girlfriend coping with losses of her own, played beautifully by Heather Lawless — is at best a catalyst, nudging him to be more attentive to the bonds he has before trying to forge new ones. The lesson may be too pat, but Goodbye is gentle in the delivery.

'Goodbye to All That' Clip with Heather Graham

Heather Graham, Anna Camp, and Paul Schneider star in Angus MacLachlan's drama about a divorced dad who starts a new life with his daughter.

UPDATED 04/21/2014

Tribeca Review: Tired of Formulaic Hollywood Romantic Comedies? 'Goodbye to All That' Is a Welcome Alternative

by Brandon Harris

Otto Wall, the person at the center of "Goodbye to All That," lauded playwright and "Junebug" scribe Angus MacLachlan's directorial debut, is a limited man — the type of man who just goes along with the flow, who doesn’t try to ruffle feathers. He's not stupid, but neither is he gifted with remarkable intelligence. He has a good job, an attractive if quite possibly overbearing wife (Melanie Lynskey) and an adorable, auburn-haired daughter who is quickly turning into a North Carolina methodist. He's lucky, at least until he isn't.

Played with gentle moxie by Paul Schneider, in what amounts to his most memorable motion picture role since Dick Liddl in "The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford," Otto is clumsy and kind and more than easy to root for. He'll need it: Otto’s life begins to fall to pieces shortly after the opening frames. An athletic outdoorsman type - we first meet him as he completes a 5K - Otto is heading out on a camping trip with a friend and his daughter when the friend drives their off-road vehicle too fast and crashes in a nearby forest, injuring Otto's foot. While he's recovering, his pensive wife demands that he meet her at the office of her therapist (Celia Weston), who informs Otto that his wife wants a divorce, suddenly and inexplicably. Taken completely by surprise, Otto is cast out into bachelorhood, which he discovers is much different than it was when he was younger.

Entering the world of Facebook stalking and OKCupid profiles, Otto finds plenty of sex, but meaningful connections are harder to come by.

MacLachlan returns us once again to the mid-size North Carolina towns that were such an evocative backdrop for "Junebug," one of the great underheralded indies of the aughts. As in the previous film, a breezy tone and self-effacing but sophisticated visual style allows darker undercurrents to sit comfortably beneath the action, seeping out in unexpected bursts of emotion that unsettle and refocus MacLachlan's often symmetrical widescreen compositions. His brand of comedy grows out of the eccentricities of his memorable characters. Who can forget (among the few who saw it) Scott Wilson's father, who secretly paints birds, or the warehouse store employee, who watches the Panthers Super Bowl appearance over and over, hoping they'll win this time, or the outsider artist with a penchant for racist tangents and sudden prayers — all of whom made up the local color in "Junebug"?

This time out, MacLachlan presents a gallery of women, drawn with the detail and humorous intimacy often missing from portrayals of modern Western ladies in a film with a male protagonist. The movie launches Wall on a "Broken Flowers"-esque trip through his romantic past and the wilds of the arranged online hookup future, eventually suggesting that romantic happiness comes in many shapes and sizes, that being a good man and a sexual adventurist aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

After a quick fling with a recently divorced blonde whom he dated in high school (Heather Graham), Otto opens up a rotation of sorts: a redhead with a penchant for kink (Ashley Hinshaw) who wants little else but evocative sex ("you're kind of a disaster, but a one helluva fuck," she tells him without pulling a punch) and a pious blonde named Debbie Spengler (a terrific Anna Camp) who will make sure you never forget her name: She's always introducing herself ("I'm Debbie Spengler"), both in the bedroom and out. But even though she's a spitfire in the sack, be careful when you find her crying after a bible-reading session the next morning - where the film gets terrific comedic mileage out of revealing each female suitor's baggage and idiosyncrasies to great comedic effect.

Otto's sights are soon set on a long lost love interest from a summer camp he attended in high school, played with great emotional insight by the comedian Heather Lawless, as a woman who has also recently found herself single and nearing forty, mourning a dead child and looking for a new start. Not reinventing the wheel by any stretch, the picture wins us over to the idea that they ought to be together quite effortlessly, while Otto goes about cleaning up the various messes in his life; his daughter increasingly doesn't want to stay at his new house because of all his late night dalliances and his wife, who seems incapable of uttering a sentence that doesn't come across as a passive-aggressive reprimand and all too frequently changing the terms of their separation, is someone Otto needs to learn to stand up to.

The constituent parts of MacLachlan's film might not seem like much on their own; together they make up to a remarkably fresh and dynamic whole. "Goodbye to All That" is the type of romantic comedy that Hollywood makes (poorly) for female audiences all the time: Will our fetching but troubled heroine land Mr. Right?

Rarely does such a picture come along that asks the same questions for a man. Even rarer does one come along with this much grit, intelligence and genuine insight into the Western sexual mores of the 21st century. A paean to an age when lust is easy and love is as hard as ever, "Goodbye to All" That is the sort of picture that if you're not careful will charm the pants right off of you.

Criticwire Grade: B+

HOW WILL IT PLAY? A Tribeca Film Festival world premiere, "Goodbye to All That" is likely to find its way into theaters with a modest distribution plan but could find solid returns on VOD.

UPDATED 04/22/2014

Anna Camp On Putting Off Kids For Her Career

Your character, Debbie Spangler, is leading a little bit of a double life. And announcing her name all the time...

She loves stating who she is. She wants to be seen and validated. The most fun thing about playing her is that she's committed. She’s committed when she’s being sweet, she’s committed when she’s regretful and guilty in the morning, and she’s committed when she’s having sex. She’s all over the place, but she’s committed.

I like to play people who start out as one thing and throughout the story, it’s revealed that they’re completely different.

UPDATED 04/25/2014

Tribeca Review: ‘Goodbye To All That’ Starring Paul Schneider, Melanie Lynskey, Anna Camp and More

As the broken, but not defeated Otto, Paul Schneider, who deservedly just won the Tribeca Film Festival award for Best Actor, turns in his best performance since his breakthrough role in David Gordon Green’s “All The Real Girls.” Your heart pours out for Otto Wall struggling to keep it together, but his terrific turn never asks for your empathy. A top-notch cast of indie characters actors surround him: Melanie Lynskey plays his ex-wife; Heather Graham appears as an old flame raring to go; Ashley Hinshaw is a fuckbuddy from the internet; Michael Chernus is a friend in enraptured disbelief to hear about his newfound sexual conquests; Anna Camp (“Pitch Perfect,” hysterical here) plays a rather looney new paramour. And the movie also features excellent turns by Audrey Scott, Amy Sedaris, Celia Weston and especially Heather Lawless, as a childhood girlfriend, whose soothing presence despite her own life calamities opens him up to the further possibilities of life and how to survive.

The joys of sex also play an unexpectedly large element of Otto’s recovery and these scenes, raw and sensual and refreshingly well-handled are just as complicated, funny and well-drawn as any of his other life experiences.

Shot in rather basic form with straightforward lighting, “Goodbye To All That” is not going to impress the visual, form or style cinephiles of the world. But it really shouldn’t matter. The content is tops. And as an astute and empathetic portrait of human crisis, resolve and survival, it’s a wonderfully authentic and perfectly touching one. [A-]