TOGETHER TOGETHER SUNDANCE REVIEW: A Platonic Love Story That Asks All the Right Questions But Lacks Meaningful Answers
by Emily Tannenbaum
Together Together is a sweet romantic comedy that celebrates the love forged between friends...just friends. Matt, a 40-year-old app designer played by Ed Helms (The Hangover), and Anna, a 26-year-old wayward millennial played by Patti Harrison (Shrill), are not actually love interests but writer-director Nikole Beckwith intentionally utilized rom-com tropes and structure to give weight to platonic love connections that Hollywood so rarely depicts between men and women.
The start of Anna and Matt’s relationship is transactional: he wants a baby with a surrogate, she wants money to further her education. However, as they lean on each other throughout each trimester, the audience realizes they both truly long for connection. The guy literally invented an app called “Loners” that is basically Tinder without swiping right, for crying out loud.
At one point, when Anna asks Matt why he chose to become a father despite not having a partner, he says this: “When I hang out with my settled friends I feel sad for what I don’t have and what I want. When I hang out with my single friends I feel sad for what I have and don’t want.”
At least he has friends. After giving birth to a child as a teen which she gave up for adoption, Anna has severed ties with her judgmental family and moved across the country to California alone. Her only consistent relationship is with her surly coffee shop coworker. If anything, Anna is far more isolated than Matt, which is probably why she puts up with his more grating personality traits.
This is where Together Together loses some of its appeal. If Helms thought this film would be his 40-Year-Old Virgin or Fundamentals of Caring moment, he’s greatly misjudged his own charm. Despite many soft and humorous moments, Matt seemed far too entitled and immature to ever feel worthy of her affection.
At their first-ever meal together to celebrate the viable pregnancy, Matt chastises Anna for ordering potatoes. His attempts to control her body only become more invasive and ridiculous as time goes on. Multiple scenes revolve around his discomfort with learning she’s still having sex. “I’m mad because there was a random penis near my unborn baby,” he tells their surrogacy counselor, played by an underutilized Tig Natoro. His misogyny-laced concern is consistently shut down verbally, but Anna acquiesces to many of his demands and Matt never makes a genuine attempt to adjust his behavior.
It was difficult to connect with Helms as his character continued to barrel through every boundary Anna tried to create only to be rewarded with her friendship. Frustratingly, Matt often treated her as a surrogate partner as opposed to a single twenty-something struggling to find her way.
And yet, by the end of the film, the love this pair shares for each other feels just as deep and meaningful as any Hollywood-approved soulmate bond—right up until the emotional birth of “Lamp” (the temporary name they’ve given the sexless baby growing inside of her). Here, the typically comedic Harrison nailed a heart-wrenching and nuanced performance. Anna breaks down in tears after one final push completes the transaction agreed upon by Matt and Anna in scene one. So, are they tears of joy for her friend or fear that this fundamental relationship she’s built for nine-months is about to end?
Alas, the film ends there and we never learn if Anna and Matt found a way to adjust their bond or if they were only truly meant to know each other for a finite period of time. Especially if the latter is true, the script could have benefitted from some sort of epilogue, if only to see how Anna has grown from this period of her life. As far as we know, Matt got his baby and Anna is back where she started: completely alone.
Together Together asks multiple profound and important questions about how we view fatherhood, women’s bodies, and which relationships society deems essential. Unfortunately, it rarely followed through with answers.
Emily Tannenbaum is a freelance critic, editor, and screenwriter living in L.A. Follow her on Twitter.
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