Film Review: Levin’s ‘5 to 7’ doesn’t always add up
Victor Levin’s “5 to 7” — written and directed by the TV veteran (“Mad Men,” “Mad About You”) — feels as though it was intended as a romantic comedy, and it certainly fulfills the promise of that phrase’s first word. It does far less well with the second, so perhaps it was supposed to be a romance, period.
Anton Yelchin plays Brian Bloom, a struggling 24-year-old writer. His struggles are, we should make clear, limited to that professional ambition. We never know how he’s paying for his apartment — rumor has it that New York rent runs a tad high — and there is little sign that he’s ever had a job. It’s possible that Levin didn’t want to bring up the near certainty that Brian is a privileged twit, living on a trust fund or the largesse of his parents.
But it would have been so easy to explain away — he won it on “Jeopardy!” or designed a simple but useful app or rescued a drowning child and then found out the parents were millionaires, who gratefully gave him a huge reward — that the reason must lurk elsewhere.
At any rate, Brian labors away, admirably exercising his skill despite a wall full of rejection letters, and less admirably whining about it in an intermittent voice-over.
Then one day he looks across a crowded street and sees... the One! Not Jesus...not Keanu Reeves... but rather Arielle (Berenice Marlohe), a French ex-model nine years his senior... the woman destined to be his first (perhaps only) great love. Even though she is married and has two kids, she reciprocates.
The title refers to the hours after work and before dinner, a time convenient for slipping away for assignations without arousing suspicion. Not that they’re worried about getting caught: Arielle and husband Valery (Lambert Wilson) play by a set of very open, very continental, rules. Valery already has his own 5-to-7 mistress, Jane (Olivia Thirlby). Brian becomes the most awkward component of this big, happy extended family.
Brian’s means of survival is not the only blank spot on the backdrop. It’s laudable to trim away the unnecessary, but, in the case of “5 to 7,” Levin leaves so much out that nothing feels natural. What does Arielle do when not with Brian? What exactly do Brian’s parents (Frank Langella, Glenn Close) do other than embarrass him, what with Dad kvetching, acting miserly, and being an all-around pain, and Mom trying to get him to chill?
There are signs that Levin is being autobiographical here. The setting feels off in some way, and it took me a while to realize why: Levin’s in his mid-50s, and the atmosphere of the movie is drenched with temporal disconnection. Brian writes on a relatively recent model computer, and there are a few other signifiers of the current century, but the background, the themes, the dialogue, the nonstop smoking, pretty much everything else feels like 30 years ago (at least). What is that computer doing in this period.. .other than giving a touch of the modern to a script about the ’80s (or earlier)?
Woody Allen pretty much owns the turf of New York romance, and Levin appropriates one of Allen’s worst traits — impressing the audience with cameos of famous people we’re all supposed to instantly recognize. (I’ve apparently been reading the wrong magazines: Of six such appearances, I recognized two by name and only one of those by sight.)
The final problem is even more subjective than most — the issue of charm and wit. For me, the dialogue never sparkled, Brian was an irritating brat, Mom and Dad were stock characters, and Arielle... well, Arielle certainly fits one of our society’s official notions of physical beauty, and that’s about as far as her character goes. Neither the writing nor the performance creates any other attractive trait. Except near the end, Marlohe has one reaction to everything Brian does, comic or tragic, clever (rarely) or stupid (not so rarely) — a big grin that suggests condescending Gallic amusement at the American’s benighted ways.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).