By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Clea DuVall
Starring: Alia Shawkat | Clea DuVall | Cobie Smulders | Jason Ritter | Melanie Lynskey | Natasha Lyonne
Country: united_states
Year: 2017
Running time: 90
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6265828/reference
Michael says: “THE INTERVENTION also has a summary that might give you pause.Ruby and Peter join three other couples on a holiday weekend at a beautiful family home in the bayou, but discover that their friend Annie has engineered the trip as an opportunity to encourage the unhappy couple to divorce. Of course, none of the other couples have it perfect either, as you might expect. Annie and Matt have been postponing their wedding repeatedly, and Annie can’t seem to hold her liquor. Sarah and Jessie are that rare lesbian couple that can’t seem to commit… or at least Jessie can’t. And Peter ends up bringing his much younger girlfriend Lola, despite the fact that none of the have ever met her. What results is a mess of a weekend where there is a lot of drinking, crying, shouting, and kissing…and nothing works out quite the way anyone expects.
“Here the cast definitely helps keep the film at a level of quality higher than expected. The always-endearing Melanie Lynskey plays the meddling, uptight Annie with Jason Ritter, her hapless, long-suffering fiancée. Clea DuVall and Natasha Lyonne bring humor and maturity to the couple who want different things. Cobie Smulders simmers with contempt as Ruby, in a loveless marriage that borders on hostility, yet reveals true depths of emotion when faced with reality. And perhaps most surprising, Alia Shawkat rules the ensemble as Lola, a character that I certainly thought was going to be the throwaway stereotype, younger person who disrupts everyone around her with little care for who gets caught in her wake. I found the film to be a refreshing, if not surprising look at adult relationships and the very different paths they can take. There’s some real maturity in the acting, and the writing as well, which is where my biggest surprise came as the credits rolled. THE INTERVENTION was written and directed by Clea DuVall, something I hadn’t noticed before completing the film. In what certainly seems to be her writing and directing debut, DuVall displays a craft and style that she should be proud of. This did not feel like a first time effort, and her assured hand most likely helped lift the material to a higher level. Nice to see another good film about adult relationships that can also still be funny. 4 cats”