Apartment Troubles
Directed by Jennifer Prediger and Jess Weixler
Opens March 27 on VOD Platforms
Cowriters, codirectors and costars Prediger and Weixler, familiar microindie supporting actresses both, dump their anxieties—about art-making, about personal relationships, about the state of the earth—into 75 appealingly messy minutes of self-parody and catharsis. Out-of-work actress and cat fancier Olivia (Prediger) and allergic, unrepresented artist Nicole (Weixler), who works mostly with sand, to highlight the ephemerality of all things, are yin-yang childhood friends about to lose their sweltering illegal East Village sublet (where the electricity is turned off, they claim by choice, though it makes it hard for them to charge their phones; when they can’t buy food, they start a “cleanse”). So they head out to LA to try out for That Special Something, a reality-talent show judged by Megan Mulally, as Nicole’s wine-stained aunt, and Lance Bass, as himself; the transcontinental structure is just enough of a framework to allow them to face up to their own hunger for acceptance. Though the movie is enlivened by cameo comedy (notably Will Forte as self-confessed mama’s boy popping Adderall like Altoids), it’s most of all a study of friendship as the kind of codependency that makes life both totally unbearable for long stretches, and worth living at all.