Obvious Child finds romance and comedy in the most unromantic, unfunny topic. And it’s not just brave; it’s funny, warm, and painfully honest.
Jenny Slate in Obvious Child
A24
Abortion may not be the exact opposite of comedy or romance, but it's still a pretty effective mood-killer for both. There's nothing like the reminder of such an unfun possible outcome of sex to put a damper on both attraction and any humor that isn't incredibly dark.
It's also still such a hot-button, divisive issue that most mainstream movies pretend it doesn't exist as an option or gingerly sidestep around it. Consider Knocked Up's "rhymes with shmashmortion," which was both an acknowledgement of the way abortion tends to be discussed in whispers and euphemisms and part of some furious skating around the issue itself. Even HBO's Girls, a show defined by its bold willingness to go places others won't (especially when it comes to women's issues), had one of its characters schedule an abortion, then let her off the hook from having to actually go through with it.
And that's why the new movie Obvious Child, which hits theaters in New York and L.A. this Friday and will expand to more cities from there, deserves a universal round of applause for the fact that it's not just a movie in which abortion is openly discussed, it's one in which there's never a question of whether or not its main character, a Brooklyn comedian named Donna Stern (Jenny Slate), is going to get one. Recently dumped, soon-to-be unemployed, and pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with a stranger, Donna's nowhere near ready to be a mom. For her, abortion is not just an option; it's the best one.
Jenny Slate and Jake Lacy
A24
What Donna may be ready for, however, is a healthy relationship, after getting tossed aside by a passive-aggressive boyfriend who didn't like the frankness of her stand-up and who was sleeping with one of her friends anyway. The tricky part is that Mr. Right — Max (Jake Lacy), the gentlemanly, slightly square guy she hooked up with, who works with computers and wears slip-ons and is nothing like the Brooklyn creatives she spends most of her time around — is also Mr. Awkward Timing. She resists his attentions for that reason — that and the not-so-minor fact that she is, for the moment, carrying his child — but as he wins her over, she starts to feel like she needs to tell him about her plans.
The sense of responsibility that Obvious Child has toward the procedure it's depicting occasionally makes it feel like an indie film PSA, as when Donna's mom (Polly Draper) confesses to her daughter that she once had an abortion herself, or when the camera follows Donna right into the examining room and holds on her anesthetic-addled face. But as discordant as some of these moments can be, their point remains resonant. This isn't something we talk about, much less show happening on camera, but an unintended pregnancy is something plenty of women have to deal with, and not all of them have the options Donna does. You won't find euphemisms here.
