Film Review: Together Together, Sundance Film Festival

Ed Helms and Patti Harrison in Together Together (Bleecker Street)

Together Together, Nikole Beckwith’s second film to play at Sundance, is a heartwarming, gentle comedy about a relationship that we do not see nearly enough of in popular culture. Ed Helms plays Matt, a single 45-year-old man who feels his biological clock ticking, and who wishes, desperately even, to be a father. Anna (Patti Harrison) answers the call before the film’s intro credits. Her awkward answers to Matt’s probing questions at the screening interview hint at the fully platonic relationship that will unfold over the course of the film: it will be anxious, searching, complicated, frustrating, and of course, awkward. But it will be no less a meaningful relationship than others.

Together Together broadens the conversation about what it means to be a ‘parent parent’ (see what I did there?), and encourages us to think more openly about what constitutes a “proper” family. Not all families have mommies and daddies, and some families are created by connections of love and necessity, rather than blood. Perhaps, one can go further and say some families are created (or not created) by commercial relationships such as surrogacy contracts. Together Together asks the broader question of whether two parties governed by what is ultimately a business transaction can be friends, and what boundaries need to be maintained for that to work out. 

The film takes place over the course of three trimesters and ends happily. The structure of the film is neat and, interestingly enough, reflects the boundaries the characters are attempting to master. Matt is a very eager father-to-be and wonders about everything from whether Anna should be eating certain foods to whether or not she should have an active sexual life. His smothering gets addressed, and afterwards he’s (mostly, sort-of) chill. Like, Monica from Friends chill. 

The pleasure of this film comes from taking the two characters’ will they/won’t they tension out of it. It is something that 2011’s Friends with Kids seemed to be doing, but didn’t. While I still recommend that film, it is demonstrative that we do not have many platonic friends of opposite genders to recall throughout film history. The majority of alliances between men and women on the silver screen usually end up between the sheets at one point or another (or it is inferred that they do). This could be reflective of a lack of nuance in our society, or, even more pressing, an expectation that sex is always part of any important, non-familial relationship. This cultural obsession with sex could prove problematic for those who are asexual or simply do not want to think about sex, yet still want intimacy or closeness.

There is also an examination of what it means to be involved in a business transaction over something so intimate, so personal. Matt and Anna are hit with a deluge of gendered norms throughout the film, from a saleswoman pouting when she thinks that Anna is a single mom, but then looking rather attracted to Matt when he states the truth, to Matt’s own mother, who expects the surrogate to know her way around Matt’s house. Matt remarks that it is difficult for him to find books about being a single dad, and, as such, has bought all the books about single motherhood instead. Hopefully this film does some of the work to change the conversations about what makes a “good family,” a “good parent,” or, even, a “good surrogate.”

Can you have pleasure with your business, and can you have business with your pleasure? Does pleasure even need to a part of it? Perhaps, it was a happy accident that it was in this case. Perhaps, the happy accident can help acclimate us to different ways of being and living, and that is where this film works its magic – making viewers just a little more open-minded by seeing actual realities reflected at them.

This film incubates conversations, so please enjoy and help create more stories like this one: about unconventional, but no less worthy, relationships.    

Together Together screened at Sundance Film Festival January 31 and February 2, 2021.