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