You might have heard that the 2015 Sundance Film Festival has been an exceptionally “sexy” one (even for Sundance) with a range of films, from The Bronze to Sleeping with Other People, that either take seriously or outrageously goof around bedroom intimacy. Writer/director Patrick Brice’s hilarious sophomore feature The Overnight—which had its world premiere in Park City, Utah, back in January—towered above the rest of the pack by being the rare comedy that fulfills both serious and comic aims with a naughty allure. While generating laughter through deliberately exaggerated situations of inevitable marital ennui, The Overnight also finds relatable, honest moments between couples craving to rekindle their closeness to and sexual desire for each other. With twists that turn an otherwise straightforward story into a pleasurable guessing game, Brice’s contemporary Los Angeles-set film doesn’t do the typical bait-and-switch seen in many “dysfunctional marriage” comedies today: hint at a more subversive view of marriage before defaulting into a conventional marital-bliss story. Instead, Brice takes often-unexpected comedic and dramatic risks—and okay, it gives us full-frontal views of a pair of (apparently prosthetic) penises as well.
Brice dives into the story head-on and introduces us to Alex and Emily (Adam Scott and Orange is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling, respectively) in their bedroom while they’re in the middle of seemingly restless intercourse. Before they jointly reach climax, however, they abruptly separate and “work on their own selves” in a synchronized fashion, clearly giving the sense that this is a sexual routine that they’ve gotten down to a science over the years. Because their toddler RJ interrupts their bedroom procedural, we don’t harp on the sexual oddity we’ve just witnessed all that much, but mentally bookmark it as Brice intends us to do. We quickly learn that Alex and Emily recently moved to L.A. and have not yet built up their own circle of friends. Thus, the couple welcomes meeting the hipster-ish Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) and his son Max at a park and scoring a dinner invitation from Kurt with open arms. Once the kids are off to bed at Kurt and his wife Charlotte’s (Judith Godréche) massive estate—thanks to Kurt’s eccentric but effective parenting methods, the kids fall asleep instantly—the two couples bond over a booze-filled, increasingly drunken night while “the freewheeling L.A. vibe” gives into “more of a swinger vibe” (in Emily’s words).
Playing like a modern-day Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (with intellectualism replaced with incessant foreplay), The Overnight’s sexually charged atmosphere rarely misses a beat due to the near-perfect chemistry among the quartet of actors. Brice lets you imagine every possible coupling scenario among the four, but doesn’t confirm who is after whom, and for what reason, until its glorious finale. Set almost entirely inside the gates of Kurt and Charlotte’s exquisite home, taking place mostly through a single night, The Overnight makes smart use of the compartments of its vast setting along with its manicured outdoors and attractive swimming pool, the latter of which houses the film’s raunchiest and funniest scene, in which Alex and Emily’s aforementioned sexual routine pays off in uproarious fashion.
The Overnight’s only slight weakness is in its approach to Charlotte. As the glamorous blonde with a French accent starring in breast-pump videos, Charlotte is granted plenty of silly moments but not enough earnest ones, making her less of a well-defined character than the others (though Godréche portrays her with consistent, terrific whimsy). Her detour with Emily outside of the home’s grounds, especially (I won’t spoil where she’s off to), never pays off in any meaningful way, thus coming across as an afterthought aiming to artificially give Charlotte the individuality the rest of the characters organically possess. Still, this only slightly undermines what is otherwise a refreshingly rule-breaking and thoroughly entertaining comedy that bends sexual norms with gusto and gleefully deflates gender-based insecurities.
