C.O.G. (2013, R)

Apologies for tardiness:  wrote the review, revised it... forgot to post it.  Ayiyi.  Anyway...

This is an interesting little film – it’s very slight, wonderfully funny in a quiet way, and has real emotion as well.  It might remind me a bit of The Station Agent, though more wandering and untethered.  Either way, it’s extremely well made, and I enjoyed it a lot.

 

Based on an autobiographical short story by David Sedaris, C.O.G. opens on David, a young Ivy League type, traveling from his Connecticut home to rural Oregon.  After a falling-out with his mother (the implication is that he came out and it didn’t go well,) he’s decided to “take some time off” and work on an apple orchard.  The minute he shows up in his Yale sweater telling the local migrant workers how he wants to get his hands dirty, it’s clear he’s in for an education.

 

And so he is.  Through several seasons, homes, and odd jobs, David is tossed from pillar to post.  He makes and loses hard-won friends, he realizes how different the world is outside his usual circle, and he’s repeatedly confronted with the idea of God.  His growing pains come slowly and often embarrassingly – at an apple-packing factory, for instance, his blue-collar coworkers are scathing when “Einstein” bites into an apple, unaware that the whole stock is floating in pesticide.

 

This is a film that lives and dies by its protagonist, and there’s something I really love about David.  He’s not particularly likeable; he’s sheltered and pretentious, with an incurable smart mouth that has a pithy remark about everything.  And yet, his relentlessness is both amusing and admirable.  As much as I laugh at his fumbling attempts to schlep a heavy butane canister the several miles between the orchard and the nearest filling station, he still does it, and generally seems to learn from his many mistakes.  Jonathan Groff’s sardonic performance is infused with just enough heart to make you root for David (I think this is my favorite performance of his – he’s terrific here.)

 

Because the heart is there.  Though he often acts imperious, David is desperate to connect with someone.  His hunger for friendship causes him to latch onto people he probably never would’ve spoken to in his “real” life, to both his benefit and detriment, and when things go wrong, his sorrow is palpable.  And then there’s his relationship with his mother.  We never see them talk directly to one another, but despite his initial assurances that he won’t contact her, more than one lonely moment finds him at a payphone, posturing into her voicemail about what a great time he’s having in Oregon.  On her side, while she’s never shown onscreen and she only speaks one line, it’s clear she’s missing him as well.

 

Besides Jonathan Groff, the movie also features the fantastic Corey Stoll, a.k.a. Hemingway from Midnight in Paris and more recently of House of Cards.  Casey Wilson, who used to be on SNL, is excellent in a brief, more dramatic turn, and Denis O’Hare (who I first knew as Guiteau in the Broadway production of Assassins) seems to have an unusual niche – I’ve seen play characters with varying levels of homophobia in no less than four queer-themed movies.

 

Warnings

 

Swearing and some sexual content (including a scene with some toys that don't get used.)