Still wondering what ordinary, educated middle class people do with themselves after college? Writer-director Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation) has made another bewitching and potentially infuriating understatement on that subject, called Beeswax.
Although resolutely documentarian in demeanor, Bujalski’s new film is meticulously scripted and, albeit mysteriously, directed; it strives for the sort of authentic, shambling naturalism that conceals any evidence of its own striving. Accordingly, it will be divisive.
Jeannie (Tilly Hatcher) runs a vintage boutique in Austin, where tension with her friend and business partner, Amanda (Anne Dodge), has turned litigious. It may or may not help that Jeannie’s ex, Merrill (Alex Karpovsky), is a law student. And it may or may not help that Jeannie’s twin, Lauren (Maggie Hatcher, now an ER doctor in the Bay Area), drifts through the loose orbit of her sister’s world, modeling the store’s clothes for ads, meandering between jobs and men, and mulling over a possible trip to Kenya.
Female characters such as these seem unprecedented in movies, yet unfailingly true to life. The movie is a mosaic of their mutual hesitations. Let the debate, about whether it actually works, begin.