In an age where thousands of films get 

made every year, there’s often a push to make 
something different. This is how you ended up 
with rom-coms like “Love Wedding Repeat,” 
a recent Netflix film that ruined its characters 
with a complicated multiverse plot, or with 
Adam Sandler movies with fantastical plots. 
Most of these attempts to reinvent the wheel 
falter under the pressure of their own story-
line, trying to pull something meaningful out 
of a jumble of half-baked ideas.

Delightfully, “Palm Springs” was not one 

of these.

If “Palm Springs” is a water park ride, 

it starts off as a Lazy River, meandering its 
way through exposition like a typical wed-
ding movie. You meet Nyles (Andy Samberg, 
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), a relaxed but dis-
gruntled wedding guest, and Sarah (Cristin 
Milioti, “How I Met Your Mother”), one of 
the bridesmaids for the bride, her sister Tala 
(Camila Mendes, “Riverdale”). After the two 
meet, it only takes about 10 minutes for the 
plot to explode as the roller coaster takes off: 
Nyles is stuck in an infinite time loop, à la 
“Groundhog Day,” and he accidentally pulls 
Sarah into it.

The filmmakers’ ability to successfully pull 

off a plot of these proportions is a miracle, and 
even more so that they were able to fit it into 
a tight 90 minutes. And yet “Palm Springs” 
is brilliantly done, held together by a strong 
ensemble cast and a well-written story. It 
doesn’t hurt that the film is produced by The 
Lonely Island, an absurdist comedy troupe 
made up of childhood friends Samberg, Akiva 
Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Having The 
Lonely Island team as producers brings plen-
ty of their zany comedic choices — a fight end-

ing with a fork stuck into someone’s face, for 
example, could’ve come straight out of one of 
their digital shorts on “Saturday Night Live.”

Like many rom-coms, the success of the 

film is dependent on its two leads; in this case, 
Samberg and Milioti are an excellent match. 
Even as Sarah is trying to understand what’s 
going on, Nyles has long collapsed into the 
monotony of the time loop — a juxtaposition 
that is chaotic but effective. Both Samberg 
and Milioti’s performances are charming and 
compelling, subtly displaying their distress 
and helplessness without ever losing their 
comedic timing. As the time loop continues, 
the two come to a nihilistic consensus, choos-
ing to give up and waste time. This leads to a 
number of delightful montages of their time 
in the loop: relaxing in the pool, making reck-
less choices, choreographed dances and more.

It doesn’t hurt that this film came out dur-

ing quarantine, where, for many of us, every 
day is the same as the day before. Nyles and 
Sarah’s choices to waste time feel especially 
real when your own life has been somewhat 
monotonous for months. For them, the days 
only broken up by their drunken adventures 
or the occasional appearance of violent and 
vengeful Roy (J.K. Simmons, “Whiplash”). 
Still, the mental transition as the time loop 
continues is visible in their appearance — 
both of them become increasingly, but subtly, 
disheveled over time. Truthfully, this is a film 
that’s made to watch more than once: Fleet-
ing moments end up being far more indicative 
that there’s more going on. In a movie where 
the same day repeats over and over again, I 
didn’t think there would be any spectacular 
twists, but there are — and they completely 
change how the rest of the film is viewed.

7

It’s the early 2010s in New York, and 

Maria Griffiths, a trans woman in her late 
twenties and the protagonist of Imogen 
Binnie’s 2013 novel “Nevada,” is writing a 
blog post in an internet café. After recap-
ping the strange few days she’s had, she 
turns to a speculative exercise: 

“I imagine that you’re familiar with 

all the stereotypes around transsexual 
women: that we’re all sex workers, that 
we’re all hairy, potbellied old men, that 
we’re all deep-voiced nightlife phoenixes, 
that we’re all drag queens, that we’re all 
repressed, that we’re all horny shemales 
with twelve-inch cocks…. Can we talk 
about what the actual stereotypes around 
transsexual women should be. The ones 
that hit a little too close to be funny.” 

The taxonomy of trans women that 

Maria goes on to write is really more of 
a self-portrait. Trans women are, she 
writes, addicted to the internet (the place 
that guided many of us out of the closet) 
and often a little socially inept, awkward, 
unsure how to take up space in the world. 
Maria notes that “trans women try to shirk 
their male privilege before transitioning, 
disappear into themselves, and then can 
never really get back out to become asser-
tive, present, feminist women.” 

Binnie’s novel is concerned, in a large 

part, with the problem implied in this 
blog post — how do you become a person 
when you’ve been avoiding yourself for so 
long before transitioning? Maria doesn’t 
have an answer, although she’s very good 
at identifying and picking apart her prob-
lems, relating them back to the structures 
of oppression she’s learned to identify. It’s 
just that she can’t get from there to a deci-
sion. Maria is painfully passive, almost 
directionless in her inability to assert 
herself. 

The novel opens with a crisis that forc-

es Maria to act, something she’s unused 
to doing: Her girlfriend Steph, over vegan 
brunch one day, tells her that she cheated 
on her with a mutual friend. Maria’s reac-
tion is to shut down: “She’s still there, still 
watching, wishing there were something 
to say but really all she can think is, okay, 
whatever.” She goes to work like noth-
ing happened, only remembering later 
that she should probably do something. 
Something like talk to Steph about it. She 
doesn’t, though. She doesn’t even think 
about it too much. “The more she tries to 
think about it, whittle it down to how she 
feels about their relationship, the slip-
perier it gets. Thinking about Steph is like 

trying to squeeze a fish.”

Instead, her thoughts rove over every-

thing else — her job at a Strand-esque 
bookstore in Manhattan, her past, her 
unresolved conflict with her own trans-
ness — while she avoids Steph for two 
days. It becomes increasingly appar-
ent that this crisis struck her in such 
a way as to expose the fault lines of her 
tenuously maintained existence, and she 
spends most of the first half of the book 
unpacking her own life in a long, unspool-
ing inner monologue. Maria’s life has 
depended on her own ability to avoid her-
self that during this moment of crisis the 
avoidance starts to take on the air of self-
sabotage. She’s late for work a few times 
and gets fired, right after Steph breaks 
up with her before she has a chance to do 
it first. Suddenly, she’s homeless-ish and 
jobless in one of the most expensive cities 
in America. 

At this point in the narrative, Maria’s 

avoidant tendencies go into overdrive: she 
borrow-steals Steph’s car and decides to 
road-trip across America. As you might 
have guessed, this doesn’t help either. 

When next we see her, she hasn’t show-

ered in weeks and has just arrived at a 
Wal-Mart in a small town in Nevada. 
Before we see her again, though, we 
meet James, a local, who is “hotboxing 
the bathroom of his apartment halfway 
down the hill from the Wal-Mart.” He’s 
just had an argument with his girlfriend 
Nicole, and the only reason he’s getting 
stoned instead of making amends is that 
“she’s right to be mad: there is something 
wrong with him. He has no idea what 
the fuck it is, but he does need to figure 
it out if he’s ever going to have a normal 
human relationship.” If you get the sense 
that James’s internal monologue resem-
bles Maria’s, you’re right: When he’s not 
watching art-house films or getting high, 
James fantasizes endlessly and tortuously 
about becoming a woman. Unlike Maria, 
James’s particular avoidance takes the 
form of abusing marijuana and mastur-
bating a lot, but it’s avoidance nonethe-
less. 

When they meet, the two of them are 

mutually fascinated with each other — 
James because he has never met a trans 
woman before, and Maria because she’s 
certain James is also trans and doesn’t 
realize it yet. They establish an uneasy 
rapport, get high together, and eventually 
decide to drive to nearby Reno together. 

Thursday, July 16, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

SUMMER SERIES
SUMMER SERIES

KARI ANDERSON

Daily Arts Writer

FILM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW

EMILY YANG

Managing Arts Editor

The trans art of 
storytelling: ‘Nevada’

‘Palm Springs’ is a zany 
and delightful comedy

Read more at michigandaily.com
Read more at michigandaily.com

