Writer-director Jeremy Hersh makes an accomplished feature debut with this taut ethical drama led by a riveting performance from Jasmine Batchelor
, is its skill at establishing a highly specific scenario — a pact involving a young single woman, her gay best friend and his husband, all three of them smart, open-minded progressives — and making it completely relatable to any parent, or anyone who has ever considered becoming a parent. This clear-eyed ethical drama is propelled by a performance of stunning psychological insight and raw feeling from Jasmine Batchelor.
Jess is a web designer with a Master's from Columbia; she works for a Brooklyn nonprofit dedicated to helping formerly incarcerated women readjust to civilian life, but dismisses her job as "a glorified social media manager." She's equally unfulfilled in the romantic department, with boyfriend Nate pushing for greater commitment while Jess hedges with vague talk of other priorities.
Jess's position is influenced in part by her encounters with Bridget , a young mother who attends the community center with her relatively high-functioning son Leon . There's an electric nervous energy to their scenes together. Jess wedges herself into the busy, careworn woman's life and Bridget responds at first with slightly strained kindness and patience.
There are no movie-of-the-week histrionics here, and zero moralizing, even on the abortion option — just perceptive, thoroughly absorbing, granular adult drama based on difficult questions to which there are no right or wrong answers, let alone easy ones.
The fulcrum of almost every scene, Batchelor gives a performance of astonishing range. In terms of recent movies so finely attuned to the shifting emotional wavelengths of a female protagonist, only Eliza Hittman's gorgeouscomes to mind. At times Jess seems almost painfully naive and sanctimoniously saintly, at others level-headed and purposeful; she can be simultaneously drained and fired up, hardening into intractability.
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