Black Bear – 7

Part 1 is a sharp interpersonal psychodrama as a flirty screenwriter arrives at a lakeside retreat and disrupts the shaky marriage of the couple living there. Part 2 shows the same story, with the female leads reversed, being made as a movie, with a messy but funny cast of a dozen. Is Part 1, then, just a movie that was made by the characters in Part 2? Was Part 1 a real experience that led our screenwriter (Aubrey Plaza) to write the movie then made in Part 2? And what was with the black bear? Enjoying, but not really understanding what I had just seen, I raced to the reviews to discover that the reviewers were just as befuddled. What they liked, and I did too, were the recognizable stresses in the male-female relationships, the sly humor and the way Aubrey Plaza held the screen. Also noted in the reviews: a good (low-budget, single-set) movie to watch on TV.