This alternative rom-com shows love in all its messy, chaotic and confused glory. It plays out like an extended episode of Sex and the City for the quinoa generation. Take two millennials, add the element of trying to tie two lives together and shake well.
The story is told in a non-linear way as we follow the rocky relationship of Diana (Zosia Mamet of Girls fame) and Ben (Matthew Shear). Their on and off and on again approach to dating is almost as frustrating as an almost complete void of being able to communicate with either themselves and each other. It leads to some deliciously misdirected dialogue.
The reality of the actual exorbitant cost of living in New York City is never addressed. It’s left to the imagination how these awkward individuals could put the scratch together to afford the $8 a coffee lifestyle they live but it doesn’t take away from any of the fun.
True love is seldom clean and shiny and most times building up the momentum to ecstasy is a messy affair. The people that drive the story in The Boy Downstairs are anything other than slick and as the course of their actions draw them together, it does the same to the audience.
The Boy Downstairs is screening as part of the American Essentials Film Festival.
Rob Hudson
www.theboydownstairs.com
www.theboydownstairs.com
