J Paul Johnson
“Life’s a Movie,” reads the tagline for the Sundance favorite Serious People, beginning its theatrical run this week. The line alludes to the comedy’s autofictional nature: it was filmed in its co-director/co-writer/lead actor’s home and workspaces during his wife’s first pregnancy and incorporates those elements in its own storyline. Said co-director/co-writer/lead actor Pasqual Gutierrez and his collaborator Ben Mullinkosson take from Gutierrez’s own work-life balance—or lack thereof—a well-worn trope and mine it for both comedy and meaning.
That trope is the simple ruse, one character impersonating another, a scheme so often used in film you’d think it would wear out its welcome. Saboteur, The Inspector General, Some Like It Hot, Charade, Dave, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Kindergarten Cop, While You Were Sleeping, Gattaca, Dead Ringers, and Face/Off—it works in all kinds of genres, eras, and settings. Here, the trope takes a twist: Gutierrez, playing a pretty-much-on-the-nose version of himself, is a successful music video director Pasqual Gutierrez struggling with work-life balance. He’s got an offer from rapper Drake’s people to direct his biggest video yet—a handsome payday that will make his life easier. But, his wife Christine (Christine Yuan, Gutierrez’ real-life partner) is due with their first child on the exact date of the scheduled shoot. He can’t say no, and he can’t say yes. So Pasqual hits on a solution: to hire a double to stand in for him at the shoot.
What could go wrong? It’s on the surface, of course, such a boneheaded idea it’s astonishing it works at all, but Serious People sure sells it with all the confidence and swag of, say, a Drake video. Pasqual conducts a casting call for a doppelganger and sure enough, more than a dozen such apply, including the uniquely unqualified-to-direct-a-Drake-video Miguel (Miguel Huerta), whose primary suitability for the gig is that he looks at least a little like Pasqual. Mustache, mullet, ballcap, shades—that’s the ruse.
There are plenty of warning signs Pasqual’s plan will not work. First of all, tyro Miguel needs a lot of coaching, so much so that even before the shoot Pasqual is spending more and more of his precious time away from home, making Christine even more unhappy than she had been. (She, by the way, quickly turned down a big-paying role that would have taken away from her maternity leave.) Second, Miguel is kind of a hothead, assuming his new privilege as a hotshot music video director a little too quickly and excitedly, barking out inchoate orders and aggravating everyone in their circle.
The problems Pasqual and Christine face are entirely genuine. Creatives in California can ill afford to pass up what might be career-defining paydays, and the pressures of parenting aren’t easy for a dual working couple in the industry. Pasqual and Christine are, in essence, “serious people,” even if Pasqual’s solution—and the situations it engenders—are comic. As one might imagine, things come to a head on the day of the Drake shoot, with Pasqual attending to Christine’s delivery and Miguel, practically drunk on his own perceived sense of power, delivers exactly the find of directing job we’re led to expect.
Many of Serious People‘s scenes are blissfully, brutally funny, and the film has a clockwork formalism as it builds conflict upon conflict ensuing from its central ruse. It’s a sweet, tidy, efficient farce with a few surprises in store even after the fated day of the delivery and the shoot. The film’s austere formalism works in direct contrast to its own conception: the seeds of the narrative came to Gutierrez in a dream, and he, his wife Yuan, co-writer and co-director Mullinkosson improvised scenes with dozens of their friends in their own residences and workplaces. Almost all involved are directors of one sort of content or another, more used to working behind the camera than in front of it, not that you’d know from the end result.
That autofictional aspect of Serious People—its nearly documentary storyline, its casting of nonprofessional actors, its improvisational performances—gives the film a gravitas that belies its silly situation comedy. Gutierrez’s and Yuan’s dilemma is one hundreds of working parents face in what is often a cruel and unforgiving industry. That they and Mullinkosson can channel their anxieties and fever-dreams into an innovative arthouse comedy is both surprising and commendable. It’s no wonder the film met with such strong response at Sundance: Serious People, despite its simple ruse storyline, has its own steely resolve and plenty of insights to accompany its comedy.
