“Hiding behind my own intelligence.”
Review | IRL
Normally, when a guy admits to messaging multiple women on a dating site per week, you think he’s fishing. When that same guy goes out on date after date with these women, you think he’s desperate. When that same guy admits to this on those dates and gets too loud and personal, you think “TMI.” When that same guy is also the writer of the movie he’s starring in, and spins all of this as a positive, you think pretentious.
If you think you’re being too harsh, you’re not. What you’ve done is stumbled upon perhaps one of the more insufferable films of recent memory, and that’s a really poor thing to say about something so fiercely independent and technically well-directed and photographed. IRL is told primarily through an extended long-distance relationship between two dating site users, who hit things off rather quickly, based solely on each other's brutal honesty to one another.
Prior to them meeting, we see the in-person lead, Ian, go on a series of unsuccessful dates that represent a cycle of rejection all too frustrating for him. It’s shot from a one-take perspective, where the camera moves slowly but swiftly from woman to Ian and back again, with each date being clearly uncomfortable by his all-too forward attitude and all-too checkmate dialogue. Why does he behave as if he has something to prove? Why treat…
