TIM WONG knows all too well that the road to adulthood is fraught with uncertainty – an insecurity of age no better portrayed than in Andrew Bujalski's amusing, perfectly observed post-grad film Mutual Appreciation.


MUTUAL APPRECIATION, a festival favourite this year, summons a lethargic cool from its opening mattress-fielded scenes. Strung out on a bed, Alan (Justine Rice), an aspiring musician and illegitimate love child of Bob Dylan (okay, so there’s a likeness, but that’s all), makes a semblance of conversation with the iron-deficient Ellie (Rachel Cliff) – cute, blithe, definite crush material. Alan’s college pal and boyfriend of Ellie, Laurence (writer/director Andrew Bujalski), joins them soon after; Alan, turns out, has just moved to Williamsburg, NY, with little more than a booked gig at Northsix (indie placemat for the likes of The Postal Service and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club). He desperately needs a drummer. A radio interview with alt-rock host Sara (Lee Seung-min), an audiophile and ardent fan of The Bumblebee’s EP, resolves Alan’s quandary with an introduction to potential stickman Dennis (Kevin Micka) – but not before an invitation back to her apartment, a couple of beers, and a seat on the bed...

That this great little film is constantly drawn back to the bedroom – or more specifically, places to recline – is entirely appropriate. There’s a lot of lounging in Mutual Appreciation, talking life ‘n shit – under the influence or otherwise – overlayed with a vocal track of ums and ahs so organic, so impromptu, that a script seems rather pointless. These happen to be people who speak the language of my generation; a generation I’m unsure what to call, other than to vaguely define it by some sort of collective uncertainty; uncertainty prompted a decade earlier by the aimless campus undergrads of Slacker. But this is warmer, more intimate, and less obnoxious. It’s also a film keenly aware of that ugly transition into adulthood we’re never prepared for. Parents like to believe it involves working, responsibility, and getting serious. As the film points out, what it often entails is a lot of idle nothing: hanging out, gestating ideas, hoping the pieces will fall into place.

Alan is especially affected – a twenty-something college grad, talented and with the cautious support of his father, he settles for Brooklyn as a launch pad for his music minus the backbone to yield to a day job in temporary lieu of CBJB’s fame. Truthfully, he doesn’t know what he wants. Rock Star? Professional musician? When asked, he responds with more ums and ahs. After a modestly successfully gig (and a somewhat botched career opportunity with an aloof record executive played by filmmaker Bill Morrison of Decasia fame), any momentum Alan may have gained swiftly dissipates in the wake of an embarrassingly drunken after party (girls, booze, wigs... cross dressing). In this Ghost World of artistic slackers, Alan is in limbo between young and adult, waiting for something to happen. We’ve all been there.

So the dialogue is muted and unfurnished; the characters eerily familiar; the ethnography close to home. Why Mutual Appreciation matters most at this particular moment though, is for its fierce independence – so authentically indie, its stealth rep has been marketed exclusively on critical admiration and the transaction of word-of-mouth. Shot in 16mm black-and-white, cast with friends and neighbours, made with all the other no-budget clichés... the gene pool of Cassavetes needn’t be reiterated. The DNA strain of course extends further than the godfather of improv: early Jarmusch; Kevin Smith’s Clerks to a point; Rohmer and more obscurely Hong Sang-soo as noted by some; even Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, whose Ivy League clique of Manhattanites may belong in socially diametric circles to Mutual Appreciation’s hipster crowd, but share the same distinguishing features of listlessness, inanimate promise, and cosy love triangles.

The director, 27-year-old Andrew Bujalski, might just be the real McCoy, a prospective caretaker for America’s waning independent cinema. This, his second feature, has the backing of the winsome Funny Ha Ha, a film of equally wry and perceptive observation; a film blessed with same uncomfortable silences and amusing oral tics. And Bujalski’s debut is as good – and nearly as unseen (it gained limited theatrical release, and is currently available on DVD) – as Mutual Appreciation, leaning on the same stagnant people networks of adjacent roommates and college buddies with squandered university degrees. With his new film, Bujalski has Alan assume the drifter role first customised by Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer, also definite crush material), Funny Ha Ha’s delightful, albeit wayward 21st century waif. Another earth wanderer whose “deal” is met with the same mumbled, ambivalent response, her transient employment and relationship record isn’t quite the lost cause; plastered by another drunken all-nighter, she pens a goal-orientated “to do” list out of hung over realisation. By Funny Ha Ha’s end, those goals have come partway into fruition. The same can’t be said for the Alan, whose post-grad oyster is a world of inertia; a state of quarter-life purgatory nevertheless eased by the film’s note-perfect ending.

For Bujalski, this sophomore effort confirms his ability to channel lost souls, to observe their behaviour in habitat, and to articulate their awkward youth. Does Bujalski graduate? I think he already has. And therein lies Mutual Appreciation’s great irony: while its protagonist’s creative bones remain arthritic, his ambition rudder off course, its director knows exactly what he’s doing, and knows to keep moving forward. However modest these achievements are, however autobiographical his films may be, Bujalski is now the inverse of Alan without having fallen through the trapdoor of one-way adulthood. And for all his progress, he hasn’t yet sold out. All those festival and distributor rejections have at least prevented him from becoming another bloated Edward Burns or Sundance whore in search of Hollywood’s golden ticket. Bandwagon aside, so humble is this film that it’s extremely unlikely it’ll ever be seen in New Zealand again. Show your appreciation while you can.