The Freebie Dir. Katie Aselton

[Phase 4 Films; 2010]

Styles: comedy/drama, romance
Others: Humpday

The Freebie could be construed as the first neo-mumblecore film, as its star/director Katie Aselton cites Humpday, last year’s championed mumblecore project, as the sole stylistic influence for her debut film. Not only is she married to Humpday’s star, Mark Duplass — who with his brother Jay has directed other mumblecore efforts like Baghead and the recent Cyrus — but she’s lifted all the same techniques. Tight close-ups of actors, to exemplify the absurd insularity of their petty worlds; stammering dialogue, of the “Are you sure…this is a good…idea?” sort, so scenes drag on long after the entire audience has gotten the point; and of course, ceaselessly shaky camerawork.

Each of these tactics are the insufferably ubiquitous staples of new-school “independent” film-making, but who decided that “cinema verite” now translates to “exposés on the most grimly boring people you’ve ever met?” Or that the quintessential indicator of a low-budget film is an epileptic camera? Real-life conversation, at least between two intelligent people, doesn’t usually entail so much hesitation between words, and most people don’t shake while they talk, either.

But never mind the annoying mumblecore attributes, which by now can be tuned out, accordingly, like the Muzak in an airline safety video. What really sinks The Freebie is that, much like Humpday, it’s an experiment more than a film, albeit one with a very promising story. In Humpday, two laid-back straight guys decide to videotape themselves having sex for an upcoming film festival. It’s a hilarious premise, but because the protagonists live in such a small, socially liberal, sexually permissive atmosphere, there’s no real outrage to the outcome, only a sort of prolonged awkwardness.

That same smallness of scope is even more glaring in The Freebie, in which a married couple, Annie (Aselton) and Darren (Dax Shepard), allow each other one night of infidelity, in theory to reignite their sexless love life. The concept of rationalizing the act of cheating — of acting “sensibly” on impulses that are by definition senseless, characterized by the very opposite of reason — is a potentially rich one. And it’s refreshing to see a film about open relationships in a time when Hollywood rom-coms have become so marriage-centric, so cookie-cutter old-fashioned — we’re a long way from Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

But while some of the early scenes between Annie and Darren perfectly illustrate the cozy, somewhat ho-hum routine of a long-term relationship — they do crossword puzzle races in bed — Aselton’s depiction of the world outside this couple is staggeringly myopic. It is never convincing, for instance, that the barista (Frankie Shaw) who Darren sets his sights on would throw herself at him so unabashedly, even after learning about his marriage. On Planet Earth, most women don’t like being homewreckers — and certainly not the receiving end of a cheap, manipulative experiment like this. Shaw’s character is a complete fabrication, just to keep the plot in motion.

In an even dumber set of events, we are asked to believe that someone like Annie would travel alone to a bar and ask a hunky bartender for advice on who to select for a quickie. There’s not even a semblance of exploration into the fact that most men going about this “experiment” would be perceived as sleazy, creepy womanizers, while altogether too many men would salivate like hound dogs over any woman — especially one this pretty — freely offering herself up for no-strings-attached sex. After overanalyzing the complexities of cheating in the first half of The Freebie, Aselton winds up taking all the complexity — not to mention the dark humor — out of it. It’s as if she’s rushing through the film’s centerpiece just to wallow in the inevitable aftermath.

And wallow she does. The finale of The Freebie is a formulaic mess, as Annie and Darren fall prey to the expected jealousy and remorse. It also doesn’t help that Aselton leaves out certain details of the dirty deeds in question, so that we can’t tell whether or not the characters are lying. She’s attempting to pull one of those “you decide what happened” endings, but the sad outcome is that it doesn’t really matter what happened.

To her credit, Aselton does accomplish one major feat: drawing an actual performance out of Dax Shepard. He got his big break as a deadpan prankster on MTV’s practical joke showcase Punk’d, and that’s evident in the way he registers so blankly on screen. For most of The Freebie, Shepard’s monotone voice croaks like a dying, metallic robot’s, and his expression is one of wearied, put-upon annoyance. But he does muster enough energy to deliver one fuming, genuinely scary tirade towards the end, and it defines him as an actor with at least two range settings.

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