A few years ago, when diminishing page space became an issue at every print periodical in America, the Reader decided to quit listing suburban multiplexes because typically they showed only the same movies one could see in town. In the past year, however, more and more indie films have been opening in the distant suburbs but never in Chicago; sometimes these theatrical engagements are just loss leaders, meant to anchor publicity campaigns for the more lucrative business of video on demand. We used to ignore these movies, figuring they probably sucked anyway, but last fall we began to notice that more of them were decent (or at least notable) releases with big-name casts: Are You Here, the big-screen debut of Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, starring Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, and Amy Poehler, or Life of Crime, an enjoyable Elmore Leonard adaptation with Jennifer Aniston, Mos Def, John Hawkes, Tim Robbins, and Isla Fisher. In a just world these movies would have opened inside the city limits, but the big chains would rather just hand another screen to a proven moneymaker such as Interstellar.
Given the male-geezer club at work here, you won’t be surprised to learn that Roth’s Pegeen, a middle-aged woman with a mannish haircut, has been transformed onscreen into long-locked 31-year-old Greta Gerwig. Pacino is 74, which extends the 25-year age difference of the novel to 43 years, and the ick factor is exacerbated by a sequence in which Pegeen decides to spice up her and Simon’s less-than-fiery sexual relationship with a threesome involving a cute young thing they’ve met in a restaurant bar (Li Jun Li). Of course, Simon winds up mainly a spectator, gaping in gratified awe at the two writhing women from behind a masquerade mask. Gerwig, an indie It Girl who’s worked for Joe Swanberg, Whit Stillman, and Noah Baumbach, struggles with a character that was dreamed up by old men, and her false, schizoid performance—enraptured with Simon at one moment, enraged by him the next—might be overlooked only because Levinson is playing all this for laughs.
