Between the Temples & clam pie

On Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, The Idea of You, Cha Cha Real Smooth

Aug 28, 2024

Today's newsletter is centered on a few cinematic couplings of older women and younger men, inspired by the release of Between the Temples. Nathan Silver’s ninth feature was a hit at Sundance earier this year and at the box office last week. It’s long overdue for the filmmaker, and his ninth (!!) feature lavishes equal affection on both romantic parties. Movies so often tend to highlight and prioritizes the joyful revelations of the younger man over the feisty older lady when portraying this dynamic (which is also why May December was so revelatory in showing us the traumatic aspect of it).

These days filmmakers and studios are keen to focus towards the women’s perspective. For example, The Idea of You and Hello, My Name is Doris both depict woman's yearning to be seen. On the other hand, Cha Cha Real Smooth, which has Dakota Johnson as a nonsensically breathless MILF, doesn’t really update much...

I’m headed to the film festivals soon, and I’ll send out some interviews in the interim, which reminds me:

HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS

Michael Showalter, 2014

Draped in bows and bangles, Sally Fields plays a boomer fish-out-of-water styled like a geriatric Zooey Deschanel, who falls in love with the new creative director at work played by Max Greenfield (Schmidt from New Girl). What this agency does is unclear, but it employs the likes of Natsha Lyonne and Rich Sommer, which means it’s the best and worst place to work, or, just one made for television and the movies.

Michael Showalter, best known for writing Wet Hot American Summer, reveals an even hand in this coming-of-age story about a woman who, most would say, should’ve grown up ages ago. Cleverly packaging the harsh reality of ascribed gender roles into the adorkable Doris’s backstory, he spikes what could’ve been an overly twee picture with a note empathy. The film also doubles as an affectionate capsule of oughteens sensibility, North Williamsburg; Beth Behrs; Jack Antonoff, in tow.

THE IDEA OF YOU

Michael Showalter, 2024

A decade after Hello, My Name is Doris, and I presume based on his sensitive portrayal of the May-December romance, Showalter landed The Idea of You—a blissful fairytale-drama adapted from a popular book by Robinne Lee. Premised on a 40-year-old single mother serendipitously meeting cute and falling in love with a megafamous 24-year-British boy bander, the story is not a piece of Harry Styles fan fiction— but it is nonetheless steeped heavily in the intoxicating pull of daydreams.

The lead actors—Anne Hathaway, luminous and radiant, and Nicholas Galitzine marble-mouthed, fine—give credible emotional resonance to the couple’s earnest connection, even as it’s rooted in the obvious. They are sketched only sufficiently enough to win us over in the moment, and Galitzine is merely the vessel through which to explore the contradictory obligations of motherhood vs visceral yearnings of womanhood. Solene is the mother to a a teenage daughter and for her to become tabloid fodder would jolt her adolescence, even as the potential relationship would bring Solene joy. Still Showalter valiantly treats this conundrum and Solene’s once dormant desires seriously, ennobling them with weight and substance.

CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH

Cooper Raiff, 2021

The main character of this movie, which was written, produced, and directed about Cooper Raiff — reminds me of a high school classmate. He wasn’t very smart, but talked a lot; he was as far from the teacher’s pet but that would stop him from trying from the first row; he wasn’t ugly, but also not as attractive as he thought he was. Willingly he’d slot himself into the role of platonic best friend, only to leverage his friendzone platform the same way as any other asshole would. Similarly ingratiating and deceptive is Andrew, played by Raiff, who exudes an amalgam of cloying amiability and servile niceness.

While chaperoning his younger sibling to a bar mitzvah, Andrew effortlessly galvanizes the preteens on the dance floor, accidentally stumbling into a new role as the "dance motivator" and party emcee. His do-gooding impulse leads to an unlikely friendship with an autistic student, and a more improbable tryst with the girl’s mother Domino (Dakota Johnson). Depicted as little more than an enigmatically melancholy housewife, Domino becomes victim of a meek male fantasy—another manic pixie dreamgirl.

You can count on portrayals of the post-graduate slump to exhibit a a touch, if not an abundance, of solipsism. But, this particular offering fails to serve any generational-specific insights along with it. (It is one of the first Gen Z movie on this subtopic.) In a flashback sequence, a 10-year-old Andrew proclaims his love for an older lady and is rejected. Sobbing, he confides his heartbreak to his mother, only to be coddled and comforted on the drive home, a telling precursor to the egotism masked by feeble nonchalance that marks both Andrew's life and the film's approach overall.

BETWEEN THE TEMPLES

Nathan Silver, 2024

Teeming with offbeat charm, Between the Temples is an unconventional and optimistic comedy about rekindling joy in the midst of despair. Nathan Silver has uniquely crafted this message, not cavalierly, but in a way that it sticks, infused with existential unease and culturally Jewish undertones.

Following the death of his elegant, literary wife, Ben (Jason Schwartzman) drifts through his days his moms’ basement. It is in this depressive state, while getting hammered off mudslides at the bar, that he fatefully reconnects with his quirky grade-school music teacher Carla Kessler (Carol Kane). Self-proclaimed atheist and daughter of communist Jews, she’s never had a bat mitzvah, and sees this as chance for course correction with Ben as her guide.

Silver, who has a knack for acerbic wit and tortured metafictions, retains a sense of his idiosyncratic chaos and an aesthetic scuzziness in the film. This is accomplished through agitated editing (c/o John Magary), rattling closeups (c/o Sean Price Williams shooting in 16mm), and occasional dirty talk (c/o script cowritten with C. Mason Wells). But for the most part, the story crackles with soulful intimacy. Its brushes with whimsy are cut by vulnerable melancholy, much the same way that images of warm, insular comforts are balanced by the clarifying chill of the outdoors.

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In his second outing as a depressed widower (following last year's Asteroid City), Schwartzman packs on pounds and sheds his usual charm for a mask of bereftness. It’s like we’re seeing Max Fischer come full-circle into forlorn adulthood. While Ben is nominally the protagonist, Carla—ebullient, inquisitive—provides equal ballast. Kane, with her fuzz and gravel Hester-Street drawl, has never been better, and together the pair forge a confoundingly natural chemistry.

Less a showcase for self-discovery and individual rebirth, the film recognizes the ineffabilities of connection. It reminds us that such moments are worth seizing and savoring, even when genesis is uncertain, the future terminus unknown. You never know who you might find.

RIYL: Harold and Maude, Philip Roth, Joanna Sternberg, Leonard Cohen

DAIRY + SEAFOOD, YES OR NO?

Early on in their friendship In Between the Temples, Carla takes Ben to her cherished local lunch spot, where she indulges in one of her favorite culinary delights: a cheeseburger where the cheese is encased inside the patty—also known as a juicy lucy. filmed with a juddering camera and repulsive close-ups, the scene emphasizes the grotesque. This distinctively unorthodox approach highlights a palpable sense of anxiety that can accompany even the most mundane act of eating a meal.

Ben initially appears game for the experience, until he discovers the very unkosher interior, at which point he recoils in bewilderment. Carla is similarly shocked, though for the opposite reasons: “Cheese and meat—those things go together so well!” Why would anyone object?

Beyond the religious, there are many long-standing rules about proper food pairings and supposed culinary conventions, most of which have been broken. Meat and seafood is now billed as surf and turf. Meat in tomato sauce—which my friend from northerm Italy blanches at—is a longstanding Roman speciality as amatriciana.

The most dogmatic of these tend to surround dairy and seafood. (I occasionally add pecorino to my linguini and clams, don’t hate me.) But there is one such non-traditional combination that seems to have found wider acceptance: the white clam pie. The exact origins unknown, though likely hailing from New Haven, this pizza consists of clams typically baked directly the dough so they’re firmly gripped by cheese. Somehow, for some reason, it works, the salinity, the fat, and buckets of garlic.

If you’re looking to try it, F&F sells them by the slice, with an optional drizzle of Calabrian chile oil.

Otherwise, you’ll probably have to spring for a whole pie at…

Connecticut pizza shops, like Zuppardi’s, Sally’s, and Frank Pepe, which has locations in Yonkers — the better choice tbh here are the fresh tomato pies. Get them while they last.
Staten Island shops, like Deninos and Joe & Pat’s (which keeps separate website for its East Village location).
Pasquale Jones, where they come bathed in cream and w/broccoli rabe. I am eager to try this.
Motorino, with fresh cherrystones and oregano butter.
Lucia of Avenue X, which tries to approximate linguini al vongole by cooking the clams in white wine first. I have not had this one yet, either but very much want to.