Jack (Mark Dusplass), an awkward, unemployed cynic lost his brother Tom a year ago and isn’t coping very well to say the least. His best friend and Tom’s ex-girlfriend, Iris (Emily Blunt), decides to send him off to her father’s isolated cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest so that he might possibly regain some normalcy from the solitude.
To his surprise, Iris’ sister, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) is also there on the same journey of recovery after leaving a seven year relationship. The shared pain and a substantial number of shared shots of tequila make for one awesomely awkward sex scene. It’s more awkward than your first time.
When Iris shows up unexpectedly, the two scramble to hold their secret in tact to avoid any additional awkwardness, but as you know that doesn’t last long.
The breakdown and rebuilding of this emotionally precarious group makes for a wonderfully charming but highly predictable dramatic comedy. No twist and turns or suspense here, you can generally determine what will happen next. You should only expect to laugh.
The winning element here is Lynn Shelton’s magnificent and thoughtful use of scenery in the film. It creates a wonderful frame to understand the true beauty and wildness of solitude. The beauty and chaos produced in the cabin is only assisted by the isolation of the wilderness. Without it, the rawness that makes the film worth seeing would have been difficult to construct.
The ending like the rest of the film is a total, go figure, and almost clawingly annoying because of that, but much like the entire film, you appreciate it. Terribly funny and tremendously irreverent, it’s enough to hold the butch crowd and sweet enough to soften them.
