Existentialism in film has given us masterpieces from Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and many other accomplished directors. Searching for the meaning of life in a world you don’t understand or can’t relate to is a universal theme of despair that film has used for decades. Existentialism can also come across as entitled whining when characters search for answers through the windows of their multi-leveled apartment in New York City.
Accommodations is a derivative film from first-time writer-director Amy Miller Gross that would have worked better as a lengthy Facebook post you could read and forget about.
Edie Somner (Kat Foster) and her husband Jake Somner are a high-class couple with kids living in New York City. Everything seems to be perfect and easy-going until Edie reaches a breaking point of not being able to live up to the standards of their lifestyle. Jake subsequently quits his CEO job and they start to rent out their apartment on AirBNB.
After the premise is established, this film has no real plot to speak of. Scenes come, scenes end, and nothing changes. Edie’s version of changing her lifestyle and trying to conjure meaning in her life involves going to niche eating places in town and fun improv classes.
I’m unsure if this movie is meant to be a comedy or a drama but regardless, it fails at both (including a painfully unfunny repeated joke Edie has about how renting out her apartment is like renting out her vagina). Kat Foster’s character seems to be a mouthpiece for the writer-director, as she also has the desire to write movies and be a creative person. The problem with Foster’s character is she admits wanting to be a creative person only to get respect, as if she bought a rare Basquiat painting and had a moment of consciousness that she can do something besides spend money.
Note that this isn’t a tongue-in-cheek take on high-class bourgeoisie (e.g. Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring), it appears to be written as self-serious. Therapy sessions with Edie include such profound statements as, “I’m a spoiled brat, but I don’t want to be a spoiled brat.” Everyone around Edie, including her husband, remind her constantly that her problems are null and that she needs to stop complaining. When a major argument in the film revolving around Edie spending $250,000 on artwork for their apartment, her husband angrily admits that he will take a job as a CEO. These are the types of plot escalations this movie offers and it quickly becomes tiresome — screeching past unintentionally laughable.
Artists usually create art out of a feeling. What better way to lessen depression than turning it into a story you are proud of. It’s obvious that Gross wrote this in a period of uncertainty in her life and tried to create a story articulating her own feelings, but what is left is a story that makes you feel nothing for the characters or anyone who has been in these situations. I believe the idea for the script came to mind as the writer-director was balancing her check-book and having a moment of crisis, wondering how those less fortunate live.
Nothing works in Accommodations. The level of sincerity and the cavalcade of privilege borders on repugnant and tone-deaf.
