Mark Reviews Movies: PRETTY PROBLEMS

Pretty Problems, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 6, 2022

The theme of Pretty Problems doesn't amount to much more than the embodiment of a series of clichés about money, greed, and the rich. For a while, that doesn't matter in screenwriter Michael Tennant and director Kestrin Pantera's movie, which plays as a broadly satirical and slightly sinister comedy about class and manners. This one starts going for the throat, both about how grovelingly desperate those who want money can be around those who have it and about the variously terrible ways the wealthy can behave. By the end, though, it offers only a soft slap on the cheek.

That's too bad, because a lot of this is quite funny until Tennant tries to make a deeper point. The premise here is pretty simple, but the humor is less about a series of situations and more about how these characters act and react as they are or in the presence of each other.

On the one side, we have Lindsay (Britt Rentschler) and Jack (Tennant), a married couple who have come upon some tough times personally and professionally. She had dreams of making her own clothing line, but instead, Lindsay is working at a boutique shop on commissions that aren't really coming her way. He was a lawyer up until recently, but an assault charge, which arose from defending Lindsay from the son of a politician, and a probation sentence got Jack fired and dibarred.

Their marriage is in the dumps, too, if an opening sex scene of complete dissatisfaction is any indication (That they attempt to plan and can't commit to try again in the near future really doesn't bode well, either). Both of them are down and seemingly on the way out, but Lindsay's coincidental meeting with someone on the other side of this equation offers some hope of at least a good time.

She's Cat Flax (J.J. Nolan), the outgoing wife of a very well-to-do man. Shopping at the store where Lindsay works, Cat makes a big, seemingly authentic show of connecting with Lindsay, wanting to listen to her troubles, and inviting her and Jack to a weekend getaway at her and her husband's estate in wine country. Jack is skeptical of the invitation, of course, because what would a woman that rich want with or from either of them? He suspects something untoward—either sexual or sadistic. Lindsay convinces him to give it a shot.

From there, Tennant's screenplay doesn't concern itself with plot, only a string of conversations, little details about how the wealthy folks control everything going on around them, and big hopes and dreams from the visitors—mostly Lindsay—that playing this situation correctly could lead to some kind of windfall. On our part, there's the constant dread that something is going to go wrong to some uncomfortable and/or terrible degree.

Cat and her husband Matt (Graham Outerbridge), who made his fortune by predicting video streaming services as a financially and emotionally struggling teenager, just seem too nice and too accommodating for those qualities to be true. They also come across as too confident in a similar vein, and that deception, strangely, is the one the filmmakers finally land upon as the core of these characters. They're just hurting, because money doesn't buy happiness, after all.

Before it tries to sentimentalize and sympathize with the rich couple—as well as their friend Kerry (Alex Klein), who's also at the get-together with his current girlfriend Carrie (Charlotte Ubben)—in their apparent misery, though, the movie possesses some genuine bite. There's how two-faced Cat is, obviously, as she cozies up to Lindsay—whom she calls "Lindz," despite Lindsay's initial protests, although she does swallow any future ones—and gossips about Carrie, with whom she must have been pretty comfortable at one point. There's the dehumanizing way everyone refers to the hired help—one of whom, a guy named Dan (Clayton Froning), Lindsay just happened to date in college, which she confesses to Cat before asking her discretion on the matter—as an imaginary super-butler of sorts. For his part, Matt jokes about having some government contact dig into Jack's personal life, until it's obvious that there's probably more than a little truth to it.

Through all of it, Lindsay, played with sympathetic naïveté by Rentschler, tries to keep up appearances (no matter the cost to her dignity or credit card account), ingratiate herself to Cat (suggesting that Jack should do the same with Matt to get a job), and becoming caught up in a carefree, anything-goes lifestyle of which she previously could only dream. It's all so tempting and, when Cat offers some of her husband's money as an investment for Lindsay to start up a clothing business, so seemingly within reach. We get why Lindsay would overlook or ignore some obvious warning signs, and the movie offers just enough dramatic irony that her unwitting or intentional obliviousness is equally funny and worrying.

The comedy dissipates as the movie attempts to become more sincere, and to say that Tennant's ultimate point—that there's plenty of blame to go around on both sides—is unconvincing would be an understatement. In the end, Pretty Problems feels almost apologetic for some of its humor at the expense of people who definitely can afford it. That's a deadly blow to satire.

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