Peter Sollett: NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST

[mouton]

NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST
Written by Lorene Scafaria
Directed by Peter Sollett
Starring Michael Cera, Kat Dennings, Aaron Yoo, Rafi Gavron, Ari Graynor, Alexis Dziena and Jay Baruchel

Tal: You guys were pretty good but you were one arm short of a Def Leppard cover band.
Nick: You guys were pretty good except you were … two penises short of a Shania Twain … re-imagination band

On one particular night in New York City, an elusive band by the name of Where’s Fluffy? have announced a secret concert. The word spreads through the city’s underground punk scene faster than it can go out of style and before long, it reaches Nick and Norah. Nick and Norah don’t know each other when this news reaches their ears but before the end of the night, they will each find something infinitely more important than Fluffy. NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST is a contemporary romantic comedy that sets itself in an entirely unconventional place and time (can you think of another way to describe a straight romance in the queer punk underground?), but presents itself in a sometimes far too conventional fashion. While it can at times be too cool for school, it is the roughness around its edges that give it an unexpected and genuine warmth. Like any finely balanced playlist, it works its way into your head and your soul.

Nick (Michael Cera) has been down as of late. It seems his fragile heart has been trampled by Tris (Alexis Dziena), a girl so clearly wrong for him but whose physical beauty is apparently capable of diverting people from noticing her lack of a soul. Norah (Kat Dennings) has some trust issues as she naturally assumes that any man interested in her is likely more interested in her connections (her dad is an enormously successful record executive). As a result, both Nick and Norah have withdrawn – not externally as they both still function amongst the other humans but they do so at arm’s length. Like sleeping beauties though, they are both awoken from their waking comas by a shared impromptu kiss. Suddenly, worlds they never knew existed have become possibilities and an ordinary evening becomes an adventure. While the twists the evening takes are at times unrealistic, they do give the night and the film a sense of spontaneity that makes the viewer believe that anything can happen.

Peter Sollett is a delicate director. His first feature, RAISING VISTOR VARGAS, in which a group of Hispanic youths in New York’s lower east side figure out how to stop playing and how to be themselves instead, was a singular revelation. He created a strong sense of hesitation in face of the unknown and a desire to be something more. He has an ease with creating simple, real spaces that foster intimacy and humble his characters and Nick and Norah are no exception to his treatment. Outside of these two though, the remaining ensemble are little more than comic relief and functional plot progression pieces. They can come across as occasionally transparent and one-dimensional but thankfully never enough to distract from the delightful romance budding at the center of all the chaos. Cera proves his versatility once again by showing that there are hundreds of facets to being an awkward teenager, that awkwardness does not define you but is rather just how who you are can come across. Dennings is his perfect counterpoint; she is sharp and strong, a worthy adversary, but frightened underneath it all, an ideal match. The two are so strongly suited that they transform the sometimes too facile script into something much more mature and meaningful.


NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST made me want to fall in love. It also made me laugh and swoon, delight in the magic of music and believe in the transformative properties of one crazy night. It made me long to be in New York City. It made me wish that I was that young again and that believing in possibilities was that easy to do. It may not be perfect but it is almost better that way, more real. There is something so genuine at the heart of this film that makes it almost impossible not to want for Nick and Norah to realize their potential – a potential that is just as infinite as the playlist they are about to create together.

www.blacksheepreviews.com

[Chris Knipp]

Glad you started this thread and I hope others will contribute. I didn't think I could face RACHEL GETTING MARRIED just yet and saw this instead. It's indeed a charming movie in many ways and I love Michael Cera and wanted to see how he'd do in a more extended role. I hope to add my more detail comment to yours but I agree with much of what you say though I'm further from the iPod Generation than you are. . . but some things are timeless.

[mouton]

Let me just say, Chris, that RACHEL GETTING MARRIED is an incredible surprise. It is hands down one of my favorite films of the year and I cannot wait to see it again when it hits theatres. I would hope that it would affect you as deeply as it did me. Honestly, and I don't want to build it up too much, I was disoriented after leaving the screening.

[Chris Knipp]

Peter Sollett: Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (2008)

Jimmy Stewart meets Anne Hathaway, and like awesome magic stuff sorta happens

This is a movie analogous in general genre terms to Scorsese's After Hours: it's an all-night ramble in New York City with lost and found people and other complications and a sine-wave of emotions. Its talk and its hero's choice CD-mixes mark it as a picture of and for if not by the iPod generation, white bridge-and-tunnel version. Nobody gets seriously hurt, not anybody we care about anyway, though there's some serious grossness in sequences involving a drunk girl, who's a good friend of the protagonist's soon-to-be new girlfriend. He is in the process of breaking up with his previous girlfriend, who shows her unsuitability by doing a sexy dance in front of the hero's Yugo car while he's at the wheel watching. It's not what he wants anymore. He's discovered you can have a good conversation with a girl. His response is to back up and drive away, leaving her alone and unattended in a remote-looking part of one of the outer boroughs. Why is that okay? Because Rudy Giuliani made the town safe.

At the center of it all is the playlist, or the man who makes mixes which the new girl happens to love even more than the old girlfriend. What bands you like among the American high school set defines you. It's crucial. Nick O'Leary (Michael Cera) is the guy, and his nocturnal wanderings in search of love have a focus: he's the one straight guy in a Queercore (i.e. gay boy) band whose current name is The Jerk-Offs (can that really be original?). They're thinking of other names and their Asian member Thom (veteran token Oriantal Aaron Yoo: watch for him--he's good) favors Shit Sandwich. This is the kind of thing that keeps you watching when otherwise not much is happening other than cars being recklessly driven around New York City and gay boys looking cute. The gay boys are in a van; Nick chooses to drive his own valiant but battered yellow-orange Yugo. That the new girlfriend (spoiler alert) wrecks it, even though she can drive stick shift, sort of, and Nick goes right ahead into the diner to talk to her right afterwards anyway, shows that she has like totally already won his affections.

Norah is the new girl. And why does she deserve it? Actually she arrives by chance, when Nick asks her to to pose as his girlfriend just for five minutes so he can avoid recapture by his ex, Tris (Alexis Dziena). What a five minutes. Kids change fast.

Norah is Kat Dennings, who has survived Sarah Bartlett and House Bunny to arrive at this more distinctive venue. She's a beautiful girl with big lips, who looks more like Anne Hathaway than Anne Hathaway does in her downbeat indie mode for Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married. She has understated cache. She gets everyone into any of the clubs, because, it turns out, her father heads one of the most successful recording studios in New York. But she's modest about that, and doesn't brag, though she shows off the studio to Nick later on in this long night. Like wow. And wow. And can I hold that guitar? And can I hold you?

The whole band outing has another purpose--the only thing that gets Nick out of his house to join them. Rumor has it that a cult indie band that he and the (other) Jerk-Offs and also Norah all adore, called Where's Fluffy? is playing at some as yet not quite determined exclusive venue. Several bait-and-switch club runs occur before, in the wee small hours, Where's Fluffy? is found--but--another guarantee of true (newly discovered) love--Nick and Norah forget about Where's Fluffy? and leave the club to be with each other and go back to New Jersey from whence they both come--Englewood and Hackensack.

Another plot device is the drunk girl, who Norah cares about. She's called Caroline (Ari Graynor), and she's the one who (spoiler alert) does some nasty things with vomit and a toilet and a cell phone and a wad of gum that I would rather not have seen, though such stuff is a lot more harmless than serial killers or Abu Ghraib. Caroline has to be carted away, and the gay band boys volunteer to take her on so that Norah and Nick can be alone together. But then (spoiler alert) they lose her, somehow, and everybody goes looking for her again.

None of this matters. It's the thinnest pretense for a plot to keep things moving along and turn a lot of noise and stickiness and bad band names into a dream first date. Rachel Cohn and David Levithan wrote the gay-friendly and Jewish-friendly but persons-of-color-free young adult novel on which this charming little film is based. Lorene Scafaria did the screenplay, in collaboration with Ms. Cohn.

The main reason for watching is to see Michael Cera, the young actor from a suburb of Toronto, in a more sustained role than he's had before. His appearances on TV have been many and date from when he was 10; he's now 20. This is not exactly a case of Arrested Development, but many know him from that series. On the big screen he was arresting in both Superbad and Juno. The Apatow "Freaks and Geeks" folks may have sought him out, but Cera strikes his own balance between Freak and Geek, hottie and nerd. For sure some girls love him, because he is sweet, and he continues here to show the same alarmingly authentic-seeming quiet straightforwardness. Cera's line readings are so well timed and simple they feel like it's a real person talking. With his understated but original looks and style he's a born movie actor, a young Jimmy Stewart for our times.

I hope people will remember Michael Cera better from this movie than the traveling wad of gum. But I don't know. I hope I will. But the mind can play tricks on you.

[oscar jubis]

Reference to Scorsese's After Hours (and Lucas' American Grafitti, among others) is appropiate. I was hoping Peter Sollet's follow-up to his magnificent Raising Victor Vargas would also be self-penned. Well, you can't always get what you want. And what I got what eminently enjoyable thanks mostly to Cera, Dennings and Sollett, who has an extraordinary ability to infuse familiar material with spontaneity and freshness. Dennings is very good in the role of a girl who must beware of those who get close to her because of the inherent fringe benefits. I don't see any evidence that Cera's range is ample enough so that one can compare him with great actors like Jimmy Stewart but, within the limited range of his roles, he is quite accomplished.