Greenberg   Starring: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh Distributor: Fabulous Films / Fremantle Media Enterprises RRP: £14.99 FHED3200 Certificate: 15 Release Date: 13 April 2015

Convalescing from his breakdown, forty-ish Roger Greenberg agrees to housesit his brother’s place, when they go on holiday. He arrives in LA with a firm conviction that he is actively going to do nothing, but a return to his home town and a meeting with his brother's maid forces Greenberg to re-evaluate his life choices...

Greenberg (2010. 1 hr, 39 min, 28 sec) is a drama based on the true life experiences of Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who also appears in the film as Greenberg’s old girlfriend. The film was directed by Noah Baumbach from a script by Baumbach and Leigh.

Through the film we discover that Greenburg (Adam Sandler) has made some questionable choices in his life, from breaking up his band after they have been offered a contract, to losing the girl of his dreams. His return to LA makes him confront both of these issues. His desire to do nothing is jeopardised when he encounters his brother’s personal assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig) who is as quirky as Greenberg. Where his life has become one of limits and writing letters of complaint, her life contains too few boundaries.

More than anything the film is a character study of a man who has isolated himself from the rest of the world and the emerging love between Greenberg and Florence, who is able to get behind his barriers offering him a different approach to life.

In many ways the film already feels like an old movie. Up to the seventies it was not unusual to watch films driven solely by the characters and their interactions, but this seems to have essentially gone out of fashion. The premise of the film can at times seem quite dark, after all Greenberg has just recovered from some ill-defined mental breakdown, but even this aspect is allowed to be explored in a warmly humorous way. For a film which stars Ben Stiller there is a level of gentle, everyday humour, but nothing absurd or jarring. The humour comes from the characters and situations.

Tonally, the film barely changes throughout its run time and Baumbach given the film a fairly languid tempo, ideal for a film about a man drifting through life and counting his regrets.

There are some extras on the disc. A Behind the Scenes Look at Greenberg (3 min, 25 sec) which has little snippets from the cast, but mostly acts as an extended commercial. Greenberg Loves Los Angeles (2 min, 09 sec) with the director and crew discussing how they went about trying to make the city an integral part of the movie, to bring it alive as a living city. Lastly, Noah Baumbach Takes a Novel Approach (1 min, 33 sec) has the director discussing how he approached the film.

It felt like an odd indie drama and certainly something different to Stiller’s main body of work. The characters are all peculiar in their own ways, but for the most part they are also endearing.

7

Charles Packer