Life Upside Down (2023), by Cecilia Miniucchi
If there is one feeling shared by most, if not all, people during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is the feeling that life suddenly turned upside-down. There was no doubt that movies would explore this feeling and make pandemic-related movies even during lockdown, facing enormous production challenges. Nevertheless, cinema persisted and bravely faced those challenges. One such movie made during lockdown and about lockdown is Cecilia Miniucchi’s “Life Upside Down”, that now hits theaters and on-demand platforms.
In October of 2019 we meet two couples in an art gallery in Los Angeles. We meet them again in March of 2020, when the pandemic was starting. Jonathan (Bob Odenkirk) is stuck at home with his wife and unable to see his lover, Clarissa (Radha Mitchell). Paul (Danny Huston) and Rita (Rosie Fellner) are quarantined together, as the happy couple they seem to be. The four main characters are surrounded by tech devices, so they’re always communicating with each other. Like it happened to so many of us, technology helped them stay close to other people during lockdown.
COVID also impacted our characters’ professional lives. Paul is a writer and can focus more on his novel and play his beloved piano while on lockdown — that is, until he receives the news that his mother has COVID and finds out that his wife is cheating on him with their neighbor whenever she goes out for her daily runs. Poor Clarissa happens to be a teacher and has to teach her classes via Zoom. Meanwhile, Jonathan, a visual artist, uses Zoom for his many work reunions — his paintings haven’t sold in a while because of, you guessed, the pandemic. As someone who wrote short stories, took part in Zoom reunions and is the daughter of a teacher who had her praxis extremely challenged during the pandemic, I felt the drama of all characters and you, for sure, had something in common with at least one of them, professionally and pandemically speaking.
Clarissa celebrates her 40th birthday during lockdown. Paul sings to her via FaceTime, she receives gifts by mail — including a pasta machine from Jonathan! — and hosts a birthday party on Zoom. This serves to remind us the ways we found to keep close to important people even during the harshest days of the pandemic. We all had Zoom meetings for work or for school, but almost all of us, as fatigated as we felt, also took part of Zoom parties. I, for instance, went to a Zoom baby shower and had a lot of fun!
Jonathan and Clarissa’s relationship is hurt by the forced distance they have to take from each other. A long-distance relationship is always difficult, and even more difficult in their case. Distance, however, didn’t hurt couples during the pandemic as much as forced coexistence. Having to stay together 24/7, besides facing the many issues and anxieties that appeared during the pandemic, many couples couldn’t handle and asked for the divorce. Indeed: the divorce rate rose during the pandemic — in the US alone the raise was of 34% in the very first months of the pandemic.
Jonathan’s wife Sue is not seen until the end of the movie — actually, she isn’t named until the credits roll. Throughout “Life Upside Down” we only hear her voice and see her back. There is a particular WhatsApp she sends when Jonathan is feeling down that makes her a sympathetic character, and here lies the problem: are we supposed to root for Jonathan and Clarissa, therefore Sue is left literally out of the picture? It would be much more interesting if Sue was given more depth as a character. In fact, even Rita is not a very well-developed character. That being said, we can affirm that conflicts in the movie take a lot of time to build, but are resolved too quickly due mainly because of this lack of character development.
There was no doubt that “pandemic movies” would come out, and they came. They could be movies shot entirely through Zoom, such as “Family Squares” or the Brazilian “Álbum em Família” (“A Familiar Album”). They could be all about the pandemic, like the — also Brazilian — “Seguindo Todos os Protocolos” (“Following All Protocols”), in which a gay man tries to have safe dates following all health and safety protocols. The first type of movies showed that, when there was no other way to make movies, filmmakers persevered. The second kind of movies — to which “Life Upside Down” belongs — may lead us to ask the question: do we really want to see “pandemic movies” and relive a not-so-distant-and-oh-so-painful past?
Director Cecilia Miniucchi also serves as screenwriter and producer — and we even catch a glimpse of her as one of the guests in Clarissa’s birthday party. She made “Life Upside Down” while on lockdown, in mid-2020, and scenes were shot from afar using mainly iPhones.
Like the characters from “Life Upside Down”, we all felt many things during lockdown: depression, loneliness, despair, boredom. The movie is a relatable one in this sense. It could have used more character development, but it’s harmless distraction and a fun way to remember the hard times we had — seeing ourselves mirrored in the characters and thinking that we never want to go through all that again. Let’s hope.
