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Three stories, each with a flicker of something that never quite holds. Jarmusch’s deadpan usually finds the warmth under the stillness; here the stillness is mostly just… still. Whatever thread runs through them (family as obligation? as performance?) is far too faint.
I don’t entirely know what I just watched, and I think that’s the point. It opens like a coming-of-age film about two kids bonding over a Buffy-esque TV show, then quietly stops being that and becomes something stranger. The Lynch comparisons are well earned. Schoenbrun shoots suburbia soft and pink, and the Alex G score sits underneath everything like static you can’t quite tune out. The broader soundtrack, Caroline Polachek and yeule especially, is great. What stays with me is how patient the film is about not naming what it’s actually about. For anyone working through questions of identity and dysphoria, I suspect this will matter for a long time.
Watched on Sunday February 8, 2026.
This short novel starts with a funny, fast couple of chapters on the life of Sy Baumgartner and the practical challenges of continuing into later life after the loss of his wife. The latter half of the book is a more introspective exploration of the literary careers of Baumgartner and his wife, his dalliances with a younger lover, a diversion to Ukraine, and the sudden appearance of a magnetic graduate student. The book isn’t long enough to sustain or resolve each of these separate threads, but what’s there is weaved together masterfully.