Blue Jay

Having time on my hands that I didn't expect to have, I went looking for a movie on Netflix and landed on Blue Jay. Mostly I choose movies by time, because if it's no good at least its short.

The film was released briefly in 2016 before going to Netflix streaming, and is very basic: mostly two characters. It's more like a play than a film, though it has a few artful touches, such as being in black and white. Blue Jay was written by Mark Duplass, who also starts, and was directed competently by Alex Lehmann.

Duplass and Sarah Paulson bump into each other in a supermarket in their old home town. They used to date years ago, and have both come back for a spell. Small talk in the supermarket aisle turns into an entire night together, as they reminisce and almost rekindle the spark they had twenty years earlier.

For the most part I liked this film. Duplass plays a sad sack, while Paulson appears to be normal and successful (but of course she's not). The film even includes a ticking bomb: Paulson has bought ice cream that is in the trunk of her car. They keep referring to it, and my OCD was kicking in because I never would have left it in there. Lehmann might have added interstitial shots of the ice cream melting for suspense.

Paulson and Duplass find all sorts of stuff relating to their relationship in his mother's old house (she's dead, he's renovating) including, somewhat unbelievably, a cassette tape of them pretending to be married adults with children. Do couples in high school really do that? Duplass doubles down on this, with the two of them acting out that it's their twentieth anniversary. I found this to be ridiculous,

Of course there's a big reveal at the end that I won't spoil. At 80 minutes, Blue Jay (the film is titled after a diner that they visit) seems long, maybe because it's just the two of them and it's hard to stay interested in just two people for that long. Also, Duplass' acting is not up to Paulson's.