Rebecca Miller’s romantic comedy about two New School professors falling in love with each other in the Lang courtyard, had it’s U.S premiere at the New York Film Festival Monday night.
The film begins by setting up our protagonist Maggie (Greta Gerwig) as she explains to her old friend Tony (Bill Hader) that she’s decided on a donor father. In the midst of trying to impregnate herself, she meets a fellow New School professor John (Ethan Hawke) and instantly become friends as Maggie advises John on his current novel. Their time together becomes greater as they regularly meet in Washington Square Park until they quickly fall in love.
But love always has to be complicated. John is married to Georgette (Julianne Moore), a professor at Columbia University with two children when he falls for Maggie. He felt that she never gave him the time of day and that she was utterly self-absorbed.
Three years and one child later, John is still slaving away on the same novel he was when he met Maggie as she supports the family; the couple that once swooned for each other begin to fall out of love.
Maggie decides to steer her own fate and approaches Georgette in regards to her getting back together with John. After some scheming, the divorcé couple reunite at a snowed in conference down in rural Quebec, inevitably rekindling their love.
Seeing the New School on screen was like seeing your good friend have her acting debut. You feel so proud of their accomplishments that you want to shout out to the entire theatre that you know them.
The establishing shot of the film was of the Lang 12th street building. This is where Maggie and John initially meet when administration mixes up their paychecks. Their instant attraction to one another leads them to take a walk on the bridge that connects the 12th and 11th street building.
It’s during this conversation that we learn that Maggie is a business advisor for student artists and that John teaches anthropology. It’s always great to see Parsons and Lang merge forces.
The first act then continues with a scene filmed in the Lang Café, which was closed off one day during production last winter. How could a student be enraged over not getting their morning croissant when Maggie was falling in love in our very own cafeteria.
The remainder of the first act also graced us New Schoolers with John and Georgette participating in a heated discussion in the Lang auditorium.
Aside from the locations, the popular notion of New Schoolers being innovative and original was definitely conveyed through the students Maggie advises. One student wanted to merge his love for skateboarding and architecture into a business plan, while another created a stuffed animal where you could pull out the body’s anatomy from the stomach.
The final scene filmed on the New School campus was a fantastic overhead shot of John and Maggie going over his novel on the circular bench in the Lang courtyard.
Sydney is a current Junior studying Journalism & Design at Eugene Lang and the Co-Editor-In-Chief of The New School Free Press. She spends a questionable amount of time responding to emails, remembering coffee orders for her various internships, producing films & frolicking around the Lower East Side where she’s living her New York dream of occupying a bedroom with a brick wall.
