While We're Young (2014)

Directed by: Noah Baumbach
Country: USA

Movie Review: American writer-director, Noah Baumbach, already proved to be a great storyteller, fact reinforced in “While We’re Young”, his latest comedy-drama that comes equipped with intelligent dialogues and humor, and a meaningful vision of real life, executed with an amusing lightness. Just as in his previous works (“The Squid and the Whale”, “Greenberg”, or the chic black-and-white “Frances Ha”), we breathe a sense of reality and a particular way of approaching real-life problems with the appropriate dramatic balance. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play Josh and Cornelia, a married couple in their mid-forties who keep struggling to achieve success in their work, and also with the fact they can’t have children. Feeling like misfits in front of their best friends, now parents, the documentary filmmaker and his producer wife will see their lives making an abrupt turn when they meet an ambitious younger couple, Jamie (Adam Driver) – a documentarian wannabe and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) – an ice-cream maker. At the same time that a breath of fresh air arrives, they realize, slowly but vigorously, that they have different values and are in a completely distinct phase of life. As usually, Mr. Baumbach shaped his characters with depth, and the cast is no less than sensational, helping him to accomplish that. In particular, Stiller and Driver, each one in their own way, deliver top-notch performances. The story was never contrived, not even in the most insane scenes (the peak was when they join a cult group to let their demons out), effortlessly flowing with an innate subtleness and arresting graciousness. Personally, the film merely touched me on the surface but it’s honest enough to take us straight to a few truths while entertains.