Writer and Director Sarah Polley’s 2nd feature is hipster schmaltz at its purest. But that’s what you get, when you adapt Brief Encounter for the postmodern under 30’s ‘I’ generation filtered through the lense of a hipstomatic camera. Love, in its purest irrational form doesn’t have a chance when it’s all about ‘me’. Even with the ironic distances excluded. Hollywood baby-doll Michelle Williams in the central role, brings her charming insecurities and a playful thrift-store fashion sense as young wife Margot who, alongside the cuddly, nice guy, comic timings of her husband Seth Rogen (Lou) explore the minutiae of a contemporary ‘hipster’ marriage (he writes cookbooks exclusively on chickens, she is an aspiring writer), which is thwarted by Margot’s object of desire, Daniel (Luke Kirby), a rickshaw driver by day – artist by night. Many will recoil in its oversharingness and clinginess, not to mention naive metaphors and plot coincidences. Others may find the marital playfulness rather endearing, even attractive. As Polley, who it must be said, does not shy away from relationships in her movies, probes and spotlights effectively these particulars to tragic/comedic dimensions.
Tackling the eternal sin, “thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife” Polley’s film is given a wonderful reworking as it sets the cordinates totally from the perspective of Margot, who upon a chance encounter with Daniel on a work assignment, discovers he lives across the street and immediately feels a deep sexual rewakeing that five years of marriage has stiffled. Bathed in a wondeferul impressionistic light, and set in the heat of a Toronto summer, the tone of the film trys to evoke the simmering sexual tensions of Margot and Daniel. To counter this otherwise simple and inventual slide into infidelity, Polley offers a resistance in portraying the marriage of Margot and Lou as a joyous expression of young love, full of colour and playfulness, but at the same time is routine and comfortable. Rogen plays it in his usual no frills jokey kind of way, rendering him the perfect cuckold. Williams on the other hand is mercurial and very cute but carries her desire like a debilitating illness, an anxiety. The cure, for Margot as it were, comes in the form of a meeting with Daniel by a Lighthouse (Freudians Rejoice!!) sometime in the future. Suppression naturally brings frustration. Her Daniel, one could argue, is not really “real”, but rather a too perfect fantasy of a man able to probe my inner desires and insecurities through his art while physically being able to, as it were, carry Margot to her destination of sexual fulfilment. He is, in no uncertain terms, able to give her a good ride. Seen through these coordinates of feminine subjectivity then yes the film is partially enjoyable. But it also renders it ridiculously simple and cliched.
At its lowest points, Polley fails to exercise any meaningful tensions between the characters. It’s a slack film let down by the ironic distances of the dialogue. The crucial exchange between Daniel and Margot, when she asks “What would you do to me?” is delivered with all the irony of a couple playing it seriously then laughing it off as fun. Stand up comic Sarah Silverman enters the picture as Margot’s recovering alcoholic sister-in-law, in what could of have been Margot’s true confrontation of her anxiety, but instead comes across like the neighbourhood drunk, speaking the truth but never taken seriously.
But let’s not forget these are late twenty somethings, Margot,Lou and Daniel, who in Polley’s world live in a colourful gentrifying neighbourhood where there are no real worries. Second-hand markets and organic cafes ooze a pretentious liberal tolerance. It’s so politically correct, it eventually becomes boring. Even having an affair, no longer seen as taboo is treated like something you can order off a vegan menu while listening to Leonard Cohen, Feist and The Buggles while sipping cocktails in the afternoon.
Take this Waltz is in cinemas 17th August 2012.
Director: Sarah Polley
Writer: Sarah Polley
Stars: Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman
Runtime: 116 min
Country: Canada, Spain, Japan
Film Rating: 
