Lynn Shelton’s My Effortless Brilliance plays something like an overtly comic remake of Old Joy, with mountains swapped out for woods, and a third man wild card pushing the narrative along. It’s not quite like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but it’s a nicely rendered, novella-esque character study with some impressive naturalistic performances.
Sean Nelson plays Erik, an exceedingly shlubby, thirty-something author trying to match the unexpected success of his first book with his third. Terribly insecure, he turns every interpersonal reaction into a grand performance with him as the star. When asked if he’s hungry, he answers, “Yes. I am INCREDIBLY hungry!” He seems right away to be faking it like he’s still making it, and eventually we get confirmation that success was something that came and went very quickly for him, a moment he was unable to grasp and fully enjoy before it floated away. Years after his fifteen minutes, he spins party stories out his failure to assimilate into the world of fame: “I got to be at the table with Liv Tyler, but I only got to talk to her ass.”
Early in the film, Erik is “dumped” by close male friend Dylan. We then jump forward several years: Erik has completed the novel he seemed unable to start at the start and yet, it appears, neither his public profile nor his personal self-worth has become any sturdier since we’ve last seen him. After a minor personal tragedy on a book tour, Erik takes a detour, driving his Prius four hours out of his way to Dylan’s cabin in the woods. Ever the social performer, Erik assumes that the very fact that Dylan refrains from shooting him on sight is a sign that the friendship has been mended. But Dylan has developed a new friendship, with a local played by filmmaker Calvin Reeder. The three men end up spending the weekend together, feeling each other out and feeling their way around the minefield of adult male relations.
Erik is certainly out of his element, and by keeping her camera super-close and editing around his reaction shots, Shelton is able to draw a lot of humor out of the city-boy novelist’s level of discomfort. He clearly went looking for Dylan during a tough time as a human security blanket; instead, the whole situation initially draws out his personal inadequacies. Dylan and Jim are strapping, strong and attractive. Clad in flannel and denim, they keep fairly quiet, whiling the day away chopping wood, exchanging meaningful nods, reading and apparently living vicariously through Charles Bukowski (”the Shakespeare of drinking, fucking and puking.”) Eric, meanwhile, is pale, chubby and almost totally incompetent at navigating the world outside his brain. For a film with virtually zero action, Shelton is able to create a sometimes remarkable volume of visual comedy, mostly by stressing Erik’s physicality in contrast to that of his old friend and his old friend’s new friend.
Why does Erik stay, when for much of the film it seems clear that he’s not wanted? We get the sense that he doesn’t have anywhere better to be, that he’s just biding time until a neat narrative symmetry plays out. If My Effortless Brilliance satisfies but never wows, it may be because the stakes are awfully low. The self-indulgent novelist is lovingly mocked and then subtly redeemed; we get in and out in 79 minutes unburdened by the kind of insight or impact that might distract us from our own self-indulgence for very long.
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