The word is still out on whether films that attempt to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic are being released too soon. Dealing with trauma may be one reason for the very existence of art, but the pandemic trudges on, with the latest variant the most transmissible yet (though its symptoms are milder and its long-term effects less urgent). So where does this leave Alone Together, the slight story of a dull, lopsided romantic triangle told against the backdrop of March 2020? Whatever the background, Katie Holmes’ debut as writer-director runs into several problems along the road to its inevitable conclusion, the primary issue being the tediously written characters.
Alone Together is set in a time when lockdowns were in full swing, long before vaccines held the promise of a light at the end of the tunnel. We know exactly how every situation will play out as soon as the screenplay introduces an idea at the beginning of each scene, and we simply wait while the characters catch up. June (Holmes) is a food critic living in New York when the more serious reports of coronavirus begin to seep into the news; her boyfriend John (Derek Luke) gets even less characterization than that. Holmes apparently decides to commit to the fewest details possible in order to get us to the romantic-drama stuff faster.
To make a short story even shorter, John has decided to rent some shared-housing for himself and June, since it’s outside the city and early reports are saying the pandemic should only last a few weeks. John backs out on account of some family drama, and because they were already separated from each other on the day they were to set up house, June goes ahead with the plan. Through a scheduling snafu, it turns out that the owner of the house accidentally double-booked John and June with Charlie (Jim Sturgess), a ruggedly handsome auto mechanic with no intention of leaving.
Set aside the inherent irresponsibility of setting up a story like this, in which the possibility of each character contracting COVID-19 (which is otherwise almost entirely ignored, calling into question its relevancy here) from each other or before they even arrived at this house hangs over the film. That only affords a cheap sense of dramatic stakes, since otherwise the film barely offers any depth to its romance. Holmes and Sturgess are both serviceable here, but we barely understand or comprehend these people beyond basic details: we learn that June had a childhood marked by trauma, while Melissa Leo appears over video chat as Charlie’s lonely mother.
This is a fairly typical romance, with the pair sparring with each other before falling in love, and that arc is only slightly complicated by the global pandemic, which kills two relatives we never see, their demise occurring off-screen, too, because why confront this head-on? Alone Together is more concerned with its tepid love story, and it’s not nearly enough to support such tired material or such a loaded setting.
Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment
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