Mara (Deragh Campbell) can’t shake a comment that a friend of her husband Samir said over dinner in “Matt and Mara,” shaking her head during the post-mortem car ride back home after someone said, “It’s kind of weird you’re married to him when you don’t like music,” and to make matters worse, her musician husband doesn’t entirely disagree. There’s no way out of the argument, which Samir doesn’t really want to have, and of course, there’s no way out in general as the two speed ahead in their car, making walking away an impossible option as well, leaving Mara to sit and stew in the passenger seat, so close to having control over the direction of her life but not quite.
The two wouldn’t probably be having this conversation if it weren’t for the recent arrival of Matt (Matt Johnson) in Kazik Radwanski’s sly and sharply observed comedy, a destabilizing event that brings Mara in direct contact with the life she thinks she could’ve had when her old friend from college shows up unannounced at the door of her college creative writing class, hoping to get a coffee. She goes about her lecture on poetic grammar as if nothing happened, but she is clearly shaken as she teaches students only a generation removed from herself when faced with the prospect of having Matt back in her life in any way, feeling she closed the book on her old classmate long ago and came to accept the success he had as an author that eluded her. Having established an entirely different life complete with a husband and child, she’s reduced to discussing history with Matt in hypotheticals around Samir and her present in vagaries around Matt, who’s been brought back to town by his dying father and a little more vulnerable than usual despite the bravado that surely has taken him further in his profession than Mara.
Campbell, who bears a slight physical resemblance to Gena Rowlands in her intense gaze, has never resembled her more than in “Matt and Mara,” having seemingly found her John Cassavetes professionally in Radwanski. The two previously paired for the harrowing “Anne at 13,000 Ft.” in which the fearless Campbell tore into the picture like a whirlwind, with the camera always less than a few inches away in following a character who made her torment clear for all to see, and here she is equally compelling to watch as Mara when the tempest lies just underneath the surface. Radwanski, along with the keen intuition of cinematographer Nikolay Michaylov and editor Ajla Odobasic, manage to have a kinetic connection into Mara’s thoughts at any given time, with the lens sensitive to her every move and lingering in the moments where she’s processing information to make any epiphanies become some of the film’s most riveting moments.
Then again, the film has plenty of great punchlines elsewhere when Johnson, who has dependably lightened the mood in his own directorial efforts such as “Blackberry” and “The Dirties,” becomes a great foil for Campbell, whose fierce intellect and measured responses can be easily undone by her scene partner’s spontaneity. Wisecracks about artist colony debauchery and Toronto baristas eager to shut their doors may have been authored with a very specific crowd in mind, but all borne out of a restlessness of being in your thirties and not exactly where you thought you’d be, “Matt and Mara” hits you in the gut no matter how the jokes land and as Mara wonders about all the directions her life could’ve taken, the film has a sturdy narrative, casually slipping in and out of a fairly classical structure built around a writers’ conference that she has been invited to speak at, yet is unsure whether the rigamarole of crossing the border into Ithaca would be worth it when not only would Mara have to update her passport photos, but endure all the social networking she was surely relieved to put behind her when she put her ambitions to rest. Considering what the more comfortable life is — to live without knowing whether you could’ve fulfilled your youthful aspirations or to find contentment in a life without too many complaints — becomes an irresistible quandary in “Matt and Mara,” one that its characters may not find a satisfying answer for themselves, but is deeply gratifying in being raised so provocatively for an audience.
“Matt and Mara” will screen again at Berlinale on February 21st at 1 pm at Cubix 7 and 8, February 22nd at 12:30 pm at Colosseum 1, February 24th at 4:30 pm at the Akademie der Kunste and February 25th at 9:45 am at Cubix 8.