The responsibilities of surrogacy are complex but only extend so far. This person is providing a service – a precious and important and often life-changing one – for someone else (or, more often than not, two people), but it isn’t precisely a transactional relationship. There should theoretically be a respectful distance between yourself and the prospective parent(s), but they should still be involved enough for the welfare of the child to be fairly considered. Admirably, writer-director Nikole Beckwith’s Together Together explores what happens when the ethical and interpersonal nature of a parent-surrogate relationship treads that line too perilously.
Matt (Ed Helms) has been alone for his entire adult life. There have been no romantic relationships or entanglements of which to speak. He has simply been unlucky in this department, but Beckwith thankfully doesn’t write him as bitter or resentful. He has always wanted a family, though, and since that part of his life is nearly over, now that he has reached his mid-40s, he wants to be more proactive about it. To that end, he hires Anna (Patti Harrison) to be a surrogate. She’s a loner, too, having had a child and given them up for adoption just out of high school. This alienated her from her friends and family, and now, she has no prospects.
We instinctively like these characters, each of whom is just trying to squeak by without making much noise for anyone else, which makes it all the more disappointing that Beckwith is only interested in examining them in broadly comic situations. Their opening conversation, an interview Matt conducts to determine whether Anna is the right candidate, kind of sets the stage. There is an awkward tension amplified by the performances from Helms and Harrison, on which the film builds its entire foundation and rhythm. It doesn’t, however, seem like a real relationship built on personalities.
Some of it is uncomfortably funny, such as the resignation and bemusement of Matt’s parents (Fred Melamed and Nora Dunn), who are curious to find out what Anna’s whole deal is, and the doctor visits to check up on the fetus, overseen by an increasingly annoyed but utterly professional nurse (a dryly hilarious Sufe Bradshaw, outperforming everyone else in the cast). Other elements, like Anna’s requisite gay best friend/co-worker Jules (Julio Torres) – a tired comic staple that should have died after the second or third movie in which it appeared – and the awkward baby shower where everyone congratulates Anna and then asks if that’s the proper etiquette, are simply uncomfortable.
The extent of the plot follows Matt and Anna through the pregnancy, while Beckwith’s screenplay turns to the routine of alternating sequences in which either party questions their commitment to or motivation for continuing with the plan to make one of them a parent. Eventually, of course, this relationship begins to turn into something else, but the movie cannot commit to that shift, either. It all becomes about this pregnancy, even though there are other concerns that movie stops short of exploring. At its best, Together Together presents a pair of interesting, sympathetic characters. At its worst, the movie sacrifices them to their situations.
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