The Forty-Year-Old Version

 3/4

Starring: Radha Blank, Peter Kim, Oswin Benjamin, Reed Birney

Rated R for Pervasive Language, Sexual Content, Some Drug Use and Brief Nudity

In the heart of every artist is a need for self-expression.  It is overpowering even in the face of logic and common sense.  It is something they must do, regardless of whether or not they have any talent.  I speak from experience.  I wrote stories throughout high school (none of which were any good) and run a film review site that no one reads.  I pay money to sit through shit like "The Grudge," copy-and-paste MCU movies and Seth Rogen's latest ego trip just so I can say what I think about them.  It doesn't get me anything and costs me a great deal of money, but you know what?  It's mine.  It's my site, and I'm putting my thoughts and feelings out there.  It doesn't get me money or a boyfriend, but it is validating.

Like me, Radha is a writer.  Unlike me, she has talent.  She was listed as one of the "30 Under 30" playwrights nearly a decade ago.  But she can't catch a break into the theater scene and has to subsist as a high school drama teacher.  The one producer who gives her the time of day is J. Whitman (Birney), a snob who wants to tell "black stories" as long as they fit in with his narrow ideas (as in violent and miserable plays for PC sympathy, which Radha correctly calls "poverty porn").  Torn between wanting fame and validation for her work (plus the money) and being true to herself, she turns to rap.  As a rapper, she can express herself in ways that she can no longer do as a playwright.

This is a conflict as old as the hills, and has been done before multiple times in the movies.  This is the first time, however, when I really felt this conflict.  Not because I was manipulated by the director but because I so identified with the central character.  I don't know how much of "The Forty-Year-Old Version" is autobiographical, but it feels like it.  I didn't want Radha to blow her chance for success, but I also felt how trapped she felt by not saying how she really feels.  And I also felt the freedom she gets from rapping.

This is Radha Blank's movie.  She wrote the screenplay, directed the movie, and stars in it.  But this is no mere ego trip.  Blank has a lot she wants to say, and she spends two hours saying it.  She is a gifted actress, ably conveying her character's inner torment.  But Radha isn't impotent; she knows how she feels and acts on them.  It's just that her competing feelings get the best of her.  Blank is appealing in an everywoman sort of way.  This is someone we could run into on the street, and that's that makes her so identifiable.

None of her co-stars are big name actors, but they have talent, and that's what matters.  Peter Kim always brings a smile as her gay BFF-turned-agent.  He's eternally caught between supporting her and hoping her pride doesn't tank her career aspirations.  Oswin Benjamin is effective as D, a DJ that is more intelligent (intellectually and emotionally) than Radha initially suspects.  He's convincing, but so realistic that that he nearly becomes invisible.  The romance between the two is convincing, I guess, although it never catches fire like it should.  Reed Birney is perfectly cast as a snooty intellectual who isn't nearly as "woke" as he thinks he is.

"The Forty-Year-Old Version" is a good film, but not a great one.  This is a 100 minute film stretched to two hours.  There are subplots that do nothing but eat time.  Case in point: the scenes with her students.  The young actors have some appeal, but aside from the first scene that shows what she's doing to make ends meet, none of this stuff is necessary.  Come to think of it, all of those scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Still, there's a lot to like about this movie.  Radha Blank is a gifted actress and has clear potential as a filmmaker.  This movie got under my skin and made me think and feel.  I liked it.

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