movies
BY MOLLY TEMPLETON
Sweet Endings
Celeste and Jesse break up, charmingly
CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER :
Directed by Lee Toland Krieger. Written by Rashida
Jones and Will McCormack. Cinematography, David
Lanzenberg. Editor, Yana Gorskaya. Music, Zach
Cowie and Sunny Levine. Starring Rashida Jones,
Andy Samberg, Ari Graynor, Eric Christian Olsen,
Elijah Wood, Chris Messina and Emma Roberts. Sony
Pictures Classics, 2012. R. 92 minutes. 00021
arts
“L
ikable” might not be the fi rst
word that comes to mind when
you imagine a semi-romantic
comedy about a pair of divorcing thirty-
somethings, but it might be just the word
for Celeste and Jesse Forever. Writer
and star Rashida Jones, who’s arguably
most familiar from Parks and Recreation,
turned what could have been a one-note
role in I Love You Man into an actual char-
acter, and has a slippery, almost prickly
warmth; she radiates a sense that she’s a
lot of fun to be around until you piss her off. Here, she’s
equal parts charming and frustrating, a fl awed and slightly
uptight trend forecaster whose marriage — to artist Jesse
(Andy Samberg, nicely mellow) — has, at the start of the
fi lm, already fallen apart.
It’s a clever choice to start at the end. The credits play
over a montage of Celeste and Jesse’s early years, and when
we reach the present, they seem perfectly comfortable,
their relationship a mishmash of conversational shorthand,
goofy running jokes, genuine affection and the easy habits
of longtime companionship. It’s not until their friend Beth
(Ari Graynor) freaks out at them over dinner that we learn
they’re technically separated.
Celeste and Jesse Forever never offers a simple
reason for this split, and it never has to: As easy as the
title characters can be, they’ve clearly slipped in opposite
directions. She’s successful, opinionated and outgoing;
he’s a struggling artist with a quiet side. Their familiarity
masks a hard-to-describe — and hard to cinematically
display — disquiet that comes when nothing is wrong and
nothing is exactly right, either. Jones and her cowriter Will
McCormack (who plays the couple’s stoner buddy, Skillz)
have set themselves a considerable task: Their story needs
to be compelling despite being about a relationship that’s
anything but, and their characters need to be interesting
and sympathetic even when they’re turning nasty and
falling apart.
SHORTS
Paint the
Town Brown
Local rockers Cosmic Jelly are sort of an
elusive band these days. They’re fading away
into fond memory and separating offi cially, but it
wouldn’t be like them to go out without a bang.
On Sept. 2 the group will have a screening and CD
release day for their new video, “Let’s Talk About
Poop,” which is designed to knock the shit (or
should I say poop?) out of your ass.
“[The video] was a summer project,” says
director, producer and Cosmic Jelly guitarist Brett
Sisun. “We started in June and worked through
until now. We like to think of it as anti-art that is
art.” He goes on to explain that this is the intended
message behind one particular image in the video,
which features a “Poop Monster” shoving his head
through a painting. “People are either horrifi ed by
it or love it,” he says.
I’ll come clean: Feces totally amuse me, and
“Let’s Talk About Poop”— whose title is derived
from Sisun’s suggestion that it would make
a great name for a TV show — is downright
hilarious. The song “Let’s Talk About Poop”
is awesome, too, and fi ts perfectly atop the
video’s images of splattering defecation, porta-
potties and mustache stroking on the john. OK,
so perhaps this isn’t as highbrow a project as
anything Da Vinci ever came up with, but it’s art
nonetheless, and Cosmic Jelly is highly attuned
to the ways of Eugene’s artistic community.
“We’re all shit smears,” says Sisun. “You can’t
be too serious but at the same time you absolutely
have to be serious. ‘Let’s Talk About Poop’ is weird,
fun and affordable, and that’s what makes it perfect
for Eugene.”
“Let’s Talk About Poop” smears itself across
the screen 5 pm Sunday, Sept. 2, at Kesey Square;
FREE. — Andy Valentine
8 /30
THU
NEIL
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CELESTE &
JESSE FOREVER R
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They pull it off with a light touch, a careful measure
of comedy and cringe, and the occasional moment of too-
cuteness. Celeste and Jesse occasionally veers toward
humiliation comedy, but it always manages to ground
those moments in believability and turn even briefl y seen
characters into important foils for its central couple. (Emma
Roberts is particularly perfect as a sullen teen pop star.)
The fi lm is full of close-ups on Jones’ liquid expressions,
which slip easily between sulk and room-brightening
smile; it’s really her story, but Samberg’s Jesse gets just
enough screen time, and character growth, that we can see
them slipping apart and pulling themselves together.
Mostly, the fi lm succeeds because it doesn’t paint in
broad strokes. Celeste is career-focused, but the movie
never tells us she can’t have it all because she cares about
her job; when she screws up at work, she’s in trouble, but
life isn’t capital-O over. Friends get mad at each other;
people do stupid things and are forgiven; people do stupid
things and maybe don’t quite get entirely forgiven, but their
friends know how to at least let it go. Mainstream romantic
comedies have taught us to expect the overwrought and
the overwritten, and to accept a level of grandiosity that
has little to do with how people really interact. Celeste and
Jesse isn’t looking to wow you; it’s just looking to charm
(sweetest breakup comedy ever?) and maybe asking you
to think a little bit about how sometimes relationships end
not because you don’t love the other person, but because
you can’t love them the same way anymore.
ew
JIRO DREAMS
OF SUSHI
5:10
A SEPARATION
5:10
SA
SALMON
FISHING
IN THE YEMEN
7:20
BERNIE
7:20
H HUNGER GAMES
9:20
BATTLESHIP
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