Do you remember those awkward moments in When Harry Met Sally… when Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan felt a deeper connection but couldn’t bring themselves to act on it yet? Now, imagine if one of those moments were stretched into an entire feature film called Drinking Buddies, directed by Joe Swanberg, starring Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston.
Now… imagine that it’s kind of brilliant.
Drinking Buddies mines from a brief moment in its protagonists’ lives enough drama to fill a dozen mainstream romantic comedies, and while the too-real ending might not be the fist-pumping victory we’re all hoping for, it feels correct. Swanberg’s film doesn’t capture the single most important event in its characters time on this Earth, but it sweetly, comfortably and realistically captures a few days that sure as hell must have felt important while they were happening. These were the days that could have changed everything, and maybe they did, just not in the way that they were expected to.
Kate (Wilde) and Luke (Johnson) are best friends working at a Craft Beer company, and they are completely comfortable in each other’s presence, which is more than most of us can say about… well, anyone, really. They’d be the perfect couple, one imagines, if they weren’t already in relationships so relatively healthy that neither can conceive of abandoning them. Kate is dating the decent but slightly uptight Chris (Livingston), and Luke is in a long-term relationship with the inexperienced Jill (Kendrick).
Small moments of incompatibility speak volumes to the objective ear – miscommunications in the kitchen, tiny resentments about important issues unresolved – and imply simple, fundamental problems in these romances that just might be resolved by switching partners. Chris and Jill experience an instant connection, acted on innocently enough to write off as a momentary lapse in judgment, and Kate and Luke are so casually connected that they already seem married in an idyllic sense, whether or not they’re sleeping together. But do those little moments really mean the end is nigh, or does it just mean we are – all of us and the cast included – simply less than perfect?
When Kate finds herself suddenly single, and with Jill out of town for a few days, the moment comes to finally act on this brewing tension, but it’s not that simple now, is it? Circumstances intrude that feel more frustrating than contrived, less the machinations of cruel fate than just an unexpectedly shitty day. Luke’s petty jealousies, completely unearned given his official “friend” status, turn after work gatherings into a quiet nightmare, and Jill’s unspoken attraction to Luke must remain unspoken or risk disrespecting his life decisions.
These are mature people with mature emotional states; even when they act on impulse they’re making a conscious choice to allow themselves the freedom to do so. They’re not stupid enough to risk everything on a “maybe,” and maybe that makes them a little bit cowardly. Maybe it makes them sensible. But without the implausibly sage-like best friend character to snap them out of it with an impassioned speech, the kind you’d find in a more conventional romantic comedy, there’s no reason to believe they’re not simply doing the best they can with a momentarily awkward situation. And doing your best in troubling times can be dramatic enough to hold an audience in rapt attention, scanning for every detail in the characters’ interactions, searching for deeper meaning and a little hope for their future.
A quietly thrilling romance, an amusingly serious drama, a lovable relationship captured on film. What more can we ask for?
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
