The Adults spends a lot of time with people who behave like children; intentionally so as both a bonding exercise and a kind of wall against fully grappling with complex emotional issues. It’s immature and embarrassing, a sign of sustained (and meta-textually ironic) arrested development, but it is communication of a form that needs only be relevant for three people whose relationship to adulthood, as it is to each other, is non-committal but necessary -inevitable even.
The third movie from indie director Dustin Guy Defa, The Adults is an unexpectedly rich and poignant story of a shattered relationship between grown siblings gradually mended over the course of an indefinite reunion, in a way that only distinct personal relationships can be. There are no clichés to be found, the connections expressed, strained, and strengthened through highly specific shared experiences and behaviour: old games and musical routines, exaggerated impressions and make-belief characters amusing to no one but the former kids who shared their inside joke. And alongside or through these old symbols of happy childhood, the sadness and frustration each carry comes to the surface, allowed some room to heal.
Eric (Michael Cera) returns to his home-town in New York state from Portland after a three-year absence following the tragic death of his mother. A gambling addict who is implicitly in dire financial straits, his goal is to stay in town just a short while so he can beat several old acquaintances at poker. Out of obligation though he visits his estranged sisters, Rachel (Hannah Gross), who inherited their parents’ home and resents Eric for leaving them, and Maggie (Sophia Lillis), an aimless recent college drop-out who’s always idolized him. The three had been very close growing up and Eric soon finds himself reluctantly falling into old habits with his sisters, both healthily and not.
Defa’s embrace of a very particular dynamic between these siblings that barely needs explaining is a big part of the movie’s overall endearing effect. You don’t need to know why they sometimes play these juvenile characters of Charles, Moopie, Wug-Wug, what they’re meant to represent, or why they have mutual musical numbers or comedy skits they enact for each other. It can be understood enough their context as in-jokes among themselves -as many real siblings do share. Their function as tension breaker and coping mechanism is likewise apparent, and more authentic than might be assumed. Especially in light of how they come about. It’s incredibly easy for Maggie to slip into a quirky routine or silly caricature, where her older siblings require coaxing -indeed by the time the movie starts, they likely haven’t done so in years. She’s the one who brings such things out of the withdrawn Eric and the cynical Rachel. But it speaks to a real sadness she can’t comfortably express, tied-up perhaps in the fractured nature of her family. Certainly the trauma of their mother’s death has left an impact -both Rachel and Maggie suffer occasional panic attacks while Eric is just numb.
There’s a heartlessness to Eric as he re-enters his sisters’ lives; he’s detached and unsympathetic towards them. He rents a hotel room rather than stay with Rachel, and his initial plan leaves less than a day in their company. This changes though as his poker game gets more competitive -he alters flight plans to stay long enough to play certain notorious rivals, and in the process has no other choice but to spend more time with his family. In one of his best performances, Michael Cera plays Eric as someone who seems to have failed to make it on his own, is in a depressed spiral, and who only in this context of home, family, and nostalgia can reluctantly pick himself up again. There’s a scene in the last act that he plays in a way I never would have expected from his past performances. And I appreciate that Defa doesn’t provide him a tangible resolution. Though the path seems set, as Cera very organically plays a depletion in Eric’s sad toxicity in tandem with a kind of falling back in love with his sisters.
As those sisters, Hannah Gross and especially Sophia Lillis are great as well. Rachel has lived with the spectre of tragedy over her for years, and Gross plays effectively that disillusionment while also the pain of her brother’s abandonment. She’s a bit of a mother figure to Maggie, but not in a condescending way. Maggie herself is the movie’s most loveable character, and a lot of that comes out of Lillis’ strong conviction and deft performance nuances. This could very easily have been an exaggerated, annoyingly quirky caricature -especially in some of her earnest commitments to bits that veer into inappropriateness (though something her siblings ultimately far exceed her at). But Lillis allows these facets to play as natural extensions of her anxieties and desires -particularly to have her family together again. There’s a sweetness she brings to their little songs and games that can’t help but be touching.
It’s a stark contrast to Eric’s games, where any sense of friendliness and familiarity he is subtly excluded from -purely on account of his own priorities. His overtures of wanting to meet an old friend’s baby are very unconvincing, his competitiveness as apparent as his desperation. Defa employs several devices to relate a warm atmosphere at these poker games that Eric is a kind of interloper on; more miserable against this context than in the comparatively muted scenes with his sisters. It’s not a major behavioural shift, but a slight one that hinges on details of attitude -how considered he is, how casual. In fairness it’s a virtually identical level of comfort at first, but his sisters at least chip away at his emotional cocoon, while under his poorer nature he gets himself into trouble.
The movie does well to emphasize the loneliness of all three characters. Neither Rachel nor Maggie seem to have many friends in town, though the latter has an unseen roommate. All of Eric’s poker compatriots are either old acquaintances with whom he’s fallen out of touch or people that they know. When apart they’re all framed in isolation: Eric in an empty hotel room, Rachel by herself in a big vacant house. That isolation is still apparent when they’re together, even in a public café or at a zoo, they’re secluded in their own bubble. But in this case the loneliness is their safety net. Other movies have understood this particular form of solitude, but few have illustrated it so well. To the observer, Eric, Rachel, and Maggie are three weird messed-up adults who perhaps deep-down never learned not to be kids. And that may be true, but their connection, their shared history is a life-link, as is proven in a beautifully heart-warming scene at a house party where, again in their own world apart from everybody else, the three dance in perfectly choreographed yet silly rhythm to Men at Work’s “Overkill”. It’s honestly one of the sweetest moments in a movie all year.
The Adults is a movie about people who need to grow up but have been unable to do so in the shadow of grief and each other’s emotional absence. To this degree it is also an affable love story between siblings -one of the best I’ve seen. It’s ending puts me in mind directly of Before Sunset, and it’s not so far removed holistically from such indie gems of generations past.
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