Premieres: review of “Perhaps forever” (“Maybe I Do”), by Michael Jacobs

A romantic comedy without comedy and almost without romance. A drama of crossed loves in a postcard New York like those of Woody Allen but without any trace of the intelligence that the New Yorker’s films usually have. A plot of love entanglements without entanglements worth mentioning. MAYBE I DO It is a strange film because of the conventional, curious because of the obvious, as if it had been put together by one of these artificial intelligence programs that came out lately to the one who was proposed to make a film (bah, a play) about love relationships for a adult public of, say, over 50, 60 years.

Directed by the author of the play on which it is based, MAYBE FOREVER it poses a hypothetical situation so basic and at the same time so hackneyed that perhaps no one ever thought of trying it before because of how little credible it is. We first meet Grace (Diane Keaton) and Sam (William H. Macy). They are both in a cinema watching one of those black and white Swedish auteur films that make you think that this will be a pure imitation of Woody’s cinema. She sees him crying in one scene, she goes over to comfort him, they start talking and that leads to a night of intimate but not sexual conversations.

In parallel, Howard (Richard Gere) and Monica (Susan Sarandon) are in what appears to be a very elegant hotel room. She wants to have sex but he doesn’t. And the game will be set up in such a way that in the end we will realize that they are not husband and wife, but lovers. The third block stars Michelle (Emma Roberts) and, ahem, Allen (Luke Bracey), as a couple at someone else’s wedding. Everything is set for her to receive the bride’s bouquet and from then on to “formalize” the wedding plans with Woody (sorry, Allen), but the guy will make a strange move to prevent it, since he is not sure of giving the passed.

The first part works as a romantic drama, the second turns a little more to comedy and the third seems decidedly played in that tone, even physically. But what will come after that first act –an initial half hour– will be what will cause a strange look from the viewer. We won’t say much more to not spoil but let’s say that all those couples are connected to each other but not in the way we initially saw them. And that, based on the marital doubts of the young couple, they will all end up getting together on the same stage, to start what is usually called “a play”.

The excellent cast that it has does not manage to do much with such a simple and basic text, except for some moments of Macy and Roberts, who seem more committed to what is happening. The film also looks ugly, as if it had been filmed without any care (except for the costumes and makeup) and resolved with a first or second version of the script. It is not that it deals with ridiculous topics –the axis goes through the fear of getting married of one of the young people when seeing how badly those who have been married for many years treat each other– but rather that it does so without any ingenuity or elegance, simply raising the issues in question in words.

Great directors of romantic comedies and dramas –from the classics of the golden age to those of the ’90s– have gone through these themes backwards using all kinds of script or staging resources, from the elegance of the texts to physical comedy going through entanglements that become funny because of how extravagant they can be or because of the famous chemistry between the actors. Here there is almost none of that: they seem to have put everything in the hands of “the magic of the movies” and see what happens.

And the cast can’t save the insurmountable either. Sarandon, Gere and Keaton do their thing almost on automatic pilot –versions of characters that we saw them do many times–, Macy and Roberts put a little more punch in it and the boy is so forgettable that I have to Google the name every time. Oh, his name is Luke Bracey. The rest, seriously, seems put together by one of the much-talked-about AI chats that was given a stack of adult romance movie scripts to process and asked to finish one to film, if possible, that same day.