Daniel. Noah.
2018 · 10m · USA
Directed by Daniel Goldberg
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tense
Noah, a flailing writer marooned in his mother's New York townhouse, gets a drop-in from his childhood friend Daniel, now launching a psychiatry practice. Ten years of diverging trajectories squeezed into one uncomfortable visit.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Two guys in a townhouse measuring each other's failure — that's the whole canon of New York indie in a teacup. I'll allow it because the cruelty is honest.
A Whit Stillman dialogue with a Baumbach therapy hangover — Goldberg lets the friend-as-shrink premise double every line as diagnosis and dig. A clean two-hander.
Friend-as-shrink premise where every line doubles as diagnosis and dig — that's a great structural compression for a one-encounter drama. Lives on whether the two performers can stay calibrated.