Director: Matthew Shear
Writer: Matthew Shear
Stars: Amanda Peet, Matthew Shear, Alessandro Nivola
Synopsis: An actress falls for the anxious law school dropout babysitting her kids in this smart, New York-set romantic comedy
Romantic comedies are a strange beast. When a film gets labelled as such many people are suddenly averse to the idea of it. Yet, there is a certain draw to the idea of a perfect relationship that is begun, challenged, and strengthened within about an hour and a half. That draw of perfect, beautiful people is a fine fantasy to escape into, but the idea of flawed people who find each other is a far more interesting prospect. Our lives aren’t perfect and we deserve a film that’s willing to show the messiness of people not as quirks, but as pieces of the whole. Fantasy Life delves deeply into the lives of two people who live with mental illness and find, in each other, a way to cope with the mixed-up messages of their brains.
The chemistry between Sam (Matthew Shear) and Dianne (Amanda Peet) is an odd mix. They aren’t well matched to each other, but they seem to meet each other where they are. There’s an understanding that neither of them overtly talk about, but what each of them senses in the other. Sam’s anxiety and Dianne’s depression are able to be in tandem in a way that they never cancel each other out, but become a white noise for the two of them to be a bit more comfortable. It’s there that the lines of their employer/employee relationship blur.
There’s a scene when Dianne gets home after she’s had a frustrating meeting with her agent and an even more frustrating meal with her husband, David (Alessandro Nivola). She sees Sam and finally lets herself invest in the most positive adult relationship she has. She and Sam end up sitting on the couch, eating Sam’s granola bowls and watching the early ’00s reimagining of Battlestar Galactica. The distraction eases them into comfort with each other. There’s a moment when Dianne even lets her guard down enough to stretch her legs out on the couch so her feet touch Sam’s leg. Sam is visibly nervous. When Dianne realizes what she’s doing she slowly moves her feet and the moment is broken.
Matthew Shear’s script plays so well with this delicate precipice that this relationship sits on. This, coupled with Shear’s and cinematographer Conor Murphy’s eye for detail, makes for a film that lives in the tiny minutiae that other films may not understand how to handle. It isn’t just the movement of Dianne’s feet, but the way hers and Sam’s hands find each other in the space between the two front seats of the car and the passing of a spoon between them seen from David’s perspective. The film is built on the subtleties of two people falling for each other and one of them understanding that this infatuation isn’t healthy for either of them, it’s only what they think they need.
In this revelation, and all of the film’s revelations, Amanda Peet is devastatingly brilliant. Many of her scenes rely on and are necessary to her showing the inner turmoil of Dianne on her face. She has long pauses that convey so much depth of emotion and thought. When Dianne and David are alone at dinner and he tells her he’s going on tour with the band he’s joined, she takes several beats before assenting to let him go. In those beats, every facet of every possibility of decision crosses her face and we feel the anguish when she says what she really doesn’t want to say. Peet has always been incredibly funny and witty, but with Fantasy Life she shows the versatility of her talent.
It’s hard to define a film like Fantasy Life or to put it into a genre box. Its humor is the kind that can induce anxiety, but its love story is calming if non-traditional. Any label you could put on it would pale in comparison to what it actually is, which is a film that deals honestly with finding a connection you didn’t know you needed in another person. Whether the romance aspect of it completely makes sense is beside the point as the film is not doing what a traditional rom-com would do, but what makes sense for these two characters. Fantasy Life is a film that catches you off guard and wins you over with a tremendous amount of heart and stellar performances.
