Swingers

After reading this beginning to an old Terry Teachout essay on Whit Stillman, I was intrigued and thought these sounded like just the sort of movies I'd like: 

"Contrary to conventional highbrow wisdom, there are plenty of smart movies being made nowadays: they're just not being made in Hollywood. Most of the American films I've liked best in the past couple of years--Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, Doug Liman's Swingers, Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers, Daisy von Scherler Mayer's Party Girl--have been small-scale productions, often shot in and around New York, whose characters spend much of their on-screen time conversing about romance and its discontents."

Well, I love conversing about romance and its discontents. Since I've seen Chasing Amy* and The Daytrippers isn't on Netflix, I watched Swingers basically immediately. Swingers revolves around a group of aspiring actors in LA (and one very un-funny aspiring comedian, Mike). Mike left New York and a girlfriend six months before; the girlfriend subsequently dumped him. He's a wreck because they'd been together for six years: the movie picks up with his guy friends trying to get him to go out again to get over the breakup and meet someone new. The movie begins with one of Mike's friends explaining that he can't call the ex-girlfriend back, and that he has to either forget about his ex-girlfriend or pretend that he's forgotten her. His friend explains that girls never calls back until men have actually forgotten about them.

This proves true at the end of the film when the ex-girlfriend calls Mike and wants to rekindle the romance just as he's on the phone with a new girl he met, and really likes, while dancing the night before. He stays on the phone with the new girl, which is amazing because he's spent the whole previous hour and a half of the film obsessing about his last girlfriend. He's been traumatized by the break up--he can barely go out; rather than kissing new girls that he meets, he ends up telling them about his grief. But suddenly, with the advent of this new girl, he's over it. He moves on with her. And even though his ex calls, there's nothing there.

In the background of Mike's conflict, we see two of his friends who are navigating the party scene suavely, making coy eye contact with new women and then approaching at just the right time to ask for their number. His friends want nothing serious out of their flings. These boys are "money" and they hook up with countless "babies." And they try to give Mike the self-confidence to do the same. But Mike does all the wrong things--he looks at the wrong time and moves too slowly and tells (so many) bad jokes. He wants love and commitment, and he's a very sympathetic character as a result, despite his (very annoying) obsessing about his failed relationship.

The gang of guys in the film are dealing with a lot of failure--even the ones who get girls, get them under a pile of lies--assumed professions and illusions of success. All of them are dealing with the fact that they aren't getting jobs and they have to explain that to their parents, who keep asking. It is only with the last girl that Mike meets and for whom he moves on from the ex-girlfriend that he is able to be open--to tell her about his struggles finding work, for instance. That's the real foundation for a new relationship--she encourages him and he encourages her in her work.

 *Chasing Amy is overtly sexual, as far as I remember, and very honest and open. It deals with two characters who fall in love and the male character's attempt to make sense of his girlfriend's sexual past (which includes the fact that she was a lesbian). Look at me, not giving away the ending! It is taking great will power, let me assure you!