Thirty-five years after When Harry Met Sally… asked the question of whether straight men and women can be friends without sex getting in the way, Matt and Mara reframes the question with even more fraught social stakes — which heightens the accompaniment And more than ever – a pertinent query about whether two neurotic writers should fraternize with each other at all. Canadian writer-director Kazek Radwanski’s fourth film is an itchy, unsettling, and often poignant relationship drama, consistent with his previous work not just in the characters involved — particularly lead actors Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson, who also headlined Radwanski’s 2019 hit film ” Anne at 13,000 Feet — but with a tingling, vertiginous storytelling sense that makes something volatile and cinematic out of apparently static material.
A decade or two ago, when the mumblecore movement was at its peak in North American independent filmmaking, a talky, modern character piece like “Matt and Mara” — one of the highlights of this year’s Berlinale Encounters competition — might have seemed less quaint than others. As in the 2024 arthouse scene. This is not to say that Radwanski’s free-form, improvisational style feels dated or derivative. As with “Anne at 13,000 Ft.,” a disturbing character study that hinges on the shuddering sense of characters and actors being pushed to the edge of their comfort level, his latest resists comfort even as it seeks a sometimes warm, sometimes warm intimacy. Raw between the two. Characters who know each other well or not well enough, depending on the level of companionship they settle into.
At first, Radwanski’s fleet, the instant text, provides the audience with little backstory regarding the syllabically aligned title characters, rather than trusting us to fill in their history (which turns out to be simple enough and a bit complicated) while we get to know them. Mara (Campbell), a creative writing professor at a university in Toronto, in her 30s, seems to have several reactions at once — delight and indignation flit across the actor’s gorgeous, sharp face — when she (Johnson) dies, which she hasn’t yet. Several years ago, she was seen making sudden threats in one of her classes.
It’s a typical swashbuckling stunt, titled from a man whose brash personality and easy tone made him a celebrity on the New York lit scene, with several acclaimed novels to his name. Half their lives ago, they were best friends in college in Canada, and were both considered equally amazing talents. Now, Mara has taken the path of teaching while still awaiting her literary breakthrough, raising a young daughter with her husband, Samir (Mounir Chami), a handsome, accomplished musician from whom she seems almost completely detached. She blatantly declares to her mutual friends that she has no feeling for music at all; The subtext is confusingly obvious.
In this breach, calculated or otherwise, Matt returns to the city for an indefinite period, determined to return to Mara’s life with the strength of his own personality. When a stranger mistakes them for a couple, she runs with the charade, partly because her old friend brings a mysterious energy into her life that has been missing for some time, but perhaps more importantly because it reminds her of when life was less quiet and more promising. When Samir stops by to drive her to an out-of-town literary festival where she’s scheduled to lecture, Matt steps in approvingly — adding a loaded stop at that most romantic of tourist sites, Niagara Falls, to the itinerary.
For much of the film, we don’t know for sure whether Matt and Mara’s initial estrangement was simply a matter of geography and circumstance, or if it was more personally motivated. However, the more time the reunited friends spend together, and the edges of their relationship tip uncertainly into less platonic territory, we see the ways in which their egos and insecurities pit themselves against each other, now exacerbated with age and prior experience. The performances of Campbell and Johnson, both experts at clashing registers appropriately, contribute to the anxiety: their initially compressed nervous intensity is relieved by his breezy banter before the two energies begin to aggravate each other over time.
Radwanski’s screenplay is low-key — and the film, at 80 tense minutes, can afford to be so — but that tension keeps it taut and urgent, in a way that’s particularly appealing to viewers: even Nikolai Mikhailov’s turbulent, sometimes aggressive close-up camera works to pay close attention to human nature itself , whose gaze focuses heavily on its protagonists’ reactions to various miniatures, everyday epiphanies and bombs. “Matt and Mara” is not a study of relationships as it focuses specifically on the union of the title characters, but you can’t look away from them either way.