Take This Waltz

Margot (Michelle Williams) and Lou (Seth Rogen) are a married couple in their late twenties: happy, loving, and sedate. They live in a nice house in a bourgeois-bohemian neighbourhood in Toronto and have nice semi-literary jobs; he's writing a chicken cookbook and she's a freelance travel writer. While visiting a tourist attraction for research, Margot becomes acquainted with Daniel (Luke Kirby), a painter and rickshaw driver who turns out to live across the street from her and Lou. A spark between the two spreads into a chaste love affair, as meeting Daniel causes Margot to evaluate her relationship with Lou, and question whether she is ready to settle down into staid but reliable married life.

The first segment of Take This Waltz, establishing the characters and their connections, doesn't bode well for the rest of the film. It's a typically indie mix of contrived imagery and quirky conversations that openly function as heavy-handed character development; for example Margot feels uncomfortable during airport connections, because she hates the stress of moving between things. You don't say... The theme of marital ennui and the temptation to try something exciting and fresh is neither exciting or fresh itself, so Sarah Polley has her work cut out in bringing something new to the table. After the uninspiring start, though, the film settles into itself, and while never breaking any new ground is considered and self-aware enough to trade on the performances and in details rather than attempt to thrill with the plotline. There are a few genuinely funny moments, as well as some very touching ones, and all the relationship commentary is open and honest and often rings uncomfortably true.

Michelle Williams gives the believable and nuanced performance you'd expect from her - I found her a little too adorable at times, but that's a problem with the character rather than the acting - but Rogen is the real surprise: I hadn't seen him in a "serious" role before this film (although I guess no-one's really sure whether Funny People counts as comedic or not), but he's really well suited to this kind of quirky, downbeat story. Kirby is charismatic and a convincing mysterious loner-type, but I found the character of Daniel a little hard to warm to, and hence the relationship between him and Margot mainly works as a function of her character's dissatisfaction rather than inspiring any audience investment for its own sake. The script has a tendency to over-use him as representative of all the things Margot feels she is missing, so he never develops into a full character, at least compared to the other main roles.

For all its dealing with love and relationships, Take This Waltz is defiantly un-romantic. And for all its cuteness, it's deeply serious and unsentimental. The ending definitely feels too much like a lesson, but as movie-lessons go it's an unusually sensible and honest one. It's deliberately uninspiring, but in spite of that still feels hopeful: there's change you can control, and change that you can't, and considering this you might be luckier than you realise.
Tom