Saw The Puffy Chair. At first it seems like a garden-variety romance, but soon becomes a kind of anti-romance. The anti-romantic Josh goes on a road-trip with his just-about fed-up girlfriend Emily (her attendance on the trip is supposed to be a kind of apology for badly screwing up a romantic goodbye dinner, so you know things are off to a good start.) He thuds around deaf-tone to her needs (when she asks him late at night why he loves her, he responds "isn't it kind of late?") and unattractively schemes for 10 dollars off at a motel, to the inconvenience of everyone involved (and further impotent finagling later.) Part of the Josh-ian puzzle is solved when we meet his artist brother who whiles his days away filming lizards and talking huskily of how his gift for his father's birthday was going to be himself. "It's me" he groans. "I'm the gift." At first a nice change of pace from the artless Josh, the brother's oh-so-sensitivity slowly becomes oppressive and infuriating. There's a scene in a hospital near the end where I think the brother is meant to be touching/cathartic, but I just wanted to slap him.
Most of the movie is spent on the dynamic between Josh and Emily. Their relationship is clearly deeply troubled. Emily's romantic nature is at direct odds with Josh's grim and sullen outlook. Josh seems to be set up to be an ogre most of the time, but at one point he plays a beautiful song he'd written that he's clearly shy about and when, after an argument with Emily, he's proven right, he doesn't gloat. He's got feelings too it seems, but they're all so buried and guarded he may as well not have them at all. The ending is touchingly ambiguous about his feelings. We are made to try to understand this jerk, not just condemn him. It's a great ending too. Very real and believable. There's no Hollywood schmaltz in this picture.
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