The 1995-set movie ‘Landline’ is all about communication
But without texting or Facebook
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Stephanie Merry.
The new dramedy “Landline” takes place in 1995, which looks — to our modern eyes — like a simpler time.
No text messages to respond to, no Facebook posts to like, no emails piling up.
Instead, we get people slotting coins into a pay phone and checking their answering-machine messages or taking road trips and actually talking, because what else is there to do?
What ‘Landline’ is all about
At its core, “Landline” is a movie about communication. The story about a New York family navigating a rocky period is about the ways people connect or don’t, which is hard enough to explore without introducing newer technology into the quagmire of interpersonal relationships, according to the movie’s co-writer Elisabeth Holm.
“We really didn’t want it to be a story of cellphones and text messages and reading — looking at somebody’s Facebook photos,” she said. “We wanted it to be about people actually having to talk to each other.”
Remember when we were forced to do that?
Simpler times
Holm and her co-writer, director Gillian Robespierre, do. Both New York natives in their 30s, the women have fond memories of growing up in a big city at the end of the last millennium.
The two women also worked together on the sleeper hit “Obvious Child,” which launched the film career of its lead, Jenny Slate. Slate also stars in “Landline,” as Dana, an adrift 20-something who hates her job and isn’t sure she wants to marry her fiance (Jay Duplass). Meanwhile, she has to deal with tensions boiling over in her childhood home, where her nitpicking mother Pat (Edie Falco) and schlubby dad Alan (John Turturro) bicker over why high schooler Ali (Abby Quinn) is acting out. As it turns out, just about everyone is keeping a secret from someone else, and no one ever says what they truly mean.
So maybe simpler times weren’t that simple after all.
