Palm Springs

“The protagonists of Palm Springs quietly subvert gender roles.”

Title: Palm Springs (2020)
Director: Max Barbakow 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Andy Siara 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

—MILD SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 4.25/5

With classics like Groundhog Day (1993) defining the time loop subgenre and newer entries Happy Death Day (2017) or Netflix’s Russian Doll series updating the formula, it seems a tall order to make the inherently repetitive structure of someone revisiting the same day over and over again feel fresh. Yet somehow, Max Barbakow’s Palm Springs achieves just that.

Bought by Hulu and NEON at the beginning of this year for the highest sum in Sundance history, it’s safe to say Barbakow and team were happy campers. But ultimately, it’s the viewers who benefit from this glossy dramedy which comes at a time we need a shot of optimistic existentialism the most.

Andy Samberg headlines as Nyles, a cynical yet guileless veteran to the film’s time loop who seems content to float in a pool crushing beers and burritos, day after day. Enter Sarah (Cristin Milioti), newly trapped and adamant that they get themselves back to linear reality. A rom-com plot ensues and all the while, surreal dread courses beneath the film’s cheerful veneer in the form of a demonic, pulsing cave that vacuums up all manner of creatures into its infinite cycle.

Unlike the pure escapism other titles might reach for, such as Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood or feel-good reality TV like Queer Eye and Say I Do, Barbakow’s film has brought summer into our homes without diminishing the very real and scary unknowns that lurk at the edges of life in 2020. The nihilism works, while never losing sight of its primary goal of pure entertainment.

But despite the crackling chemistry of Nyles and Sarah, who set the tone for this energetic romp through silly prank montages, human pathos, and philosophical takes on the pursuit happiness, the film still falls a bit prey to its structure. The whole “waking up to the same day, every day” rigamarole can overwhelm any episodic, cinematic, or TV series narrative, and it’s near impossible to avoid that no matter how well Palm Springs handles its recurring beats of a central wedding, pool scenes, car scenes, and bar scenes—and also, an almost pathological spotlight on Akupara-branded beer. The constant holding, posing, drinking, throwing of red cans of Akupara beer felt so pervasive, I paused mid-movie to search whether or not it was product placement. It doesn’t appear to be, but I was distracted nonetheless.

But even with this slight succumbing to the subgenre’s pitfall of repetitiveness, Palm Springs nevertheless marks an impressive narrative debut for young director Barbakow.

Gender: 4.25/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

While the film centers a straight couple and its behind-the-scenes team skews definitively male—Barbakow, writer Andy Siara, and 7 of the 9 producers listed on IMDB are all men—the character of Sarah couldn’t feel any more modern, thanks to attentive writing and an ironclad sense of Sarah’s independence. Sure, Nyles propels Sarah’s story arc by inadvertently dragging her into the whole quantum physics mess, but crucially, Sarah’s perspective takes over the camera in a substantial number of scenes, and her decisions are her own to make.

Barbakow and Siara demonstrate great agility in pulling off her story, because Sarah does teeter on trope. She’s an angsty 20-something black sheep of her family, “the weird girl” that no one ever seems to understand. Identifiable by dark, often dyed hair with copious eyeliner and deadpan line deliveries, and defensively barbed to protect a soft and squishy inside that a man inevitably teases out and “heals,” Sarah actually falls into all the the above. But thanks to the way Siara renders her with a fine tip brush, shading details between these outlines of a female character, he never flattens her into just some indie girl from Southern California.

It helps that both protagonists quietly subvert gender roles. Sarah uses her wits and single-minded drive to get her and Nyles out of their sci-fi scrape, actively pushing the plot by her own steam while Nyles’ story arc stays largely internal. His emotional intelligence grows over the course of the film not because Sarah took on any of his damage, but because he digs deep into his own psyche and exhibits brave vulnerability when he admits to his issues of co-dependence. Sure, his transformation affects Sarah. But his trajectory only augments hers, rather than changes its course in any fundamental way.

In fact, Sarah’s emotional turning point doesn’t even really involve Nyles at all. In a late scene that moved me to tears, Sarah gives a heartfelt wedding speech that heaps adoration upon her younger sister, Tala (Camila Mendes)—someone she’d struggled to connect with throughout the film. And while Tala herself exhibits about as much complexity as a smiling cardboard standee, their sisterhood still feels genuine. I appreciated seeing Sarah’s personal issues come to a head with her sister and family, rather than relying on Nyles or other male characters to unbox those moments for her.

Race: 2.5/5

Palm Springs is a very white movie, although the light sprinkling of diversity doesn’t go unnoticed. Behind the scenes, Vietnamese American Quyen Tran is responsible for the film’s buoyant, sun-baked cinematography. Onscreen, Brazilian American Camila Mendes plays Tala while Jacqueline Obradors, who plays Tala’s mother Pia, was born to Argentinian immigrants. It must be noted, however, that the characters of Tala and Pia both pass as white, and perhaps the actors even identify as white themselves on top of being Latinx.

Jerry (Tongayi Chirisa), a Black wedding guest, gets a few positive if fleeting scenes. It’s sad this needs to even be mentioned but with colorism as rampant as it is in Hollywood, I was glad to see a dark-skinned actor, even if he does remain the lone Black character throughout the film.

Adding to the film’s men of color, the wedding officiant, Trevor, is played by the hunky Chris Pang who broke out—abs first—in 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians. I appreciate how the filmmakers kept Pang’s character Aussie, both during a hook-up scene where Nyles’ chirpy girlfriend Misty (Meredith Hagner) demands Trevor to “say something in Australian to me.” Later, during Pang’s few lines, the Melbourne-born actor retains his natural accent too.

At the end of the day, it’s hard to fault Palm Springs when its whiteness presents a pretty accurate picture, with the actual demographics of Palm Springs 84% white in 2017. Among that group, 22% also identified Hispanic—not unlike the characters of Tala and her mother Pia. While technically Brazilians like Mendes aren’t Hispanic, they’re Latinx, and ultimately it’s up to peoples’ discretion how they identify on the U.S. census, the point is that Palm Springs generally matches the demographics of reality and that’s a good thing.

Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.00

During their early getting-to-know-you conversations, Nyles shares with Sarah the laundry list of people he’s hooked up with during his endless repetitions of of November 9th after November 9th. He casually mentions a tryst with Jerry, the line delivered for light comedy. But Samberg’s humor doesn’t denigrate gay men in the slightest. Rather, the mention of gay sex flickers by quickly, essentially normalizing same-sex relationships thanks to how little fanfare is made about it. Not enough substance to notch any bonus points in this category, but a decent baseline for cishet movies to do the bare minimum.

Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.67/5

Watching Palm Springs feels as effortless as whooshing down an inflatable Slip ‘N Slide. From the bouncy dialogue to snappy performances from Samberg and Milioti, to the impeccable production design that ensures continuity day after day, scene after scene, I couldn’t be happier to have spent a Saturday evening basking in this timely movie. Nobody knows what lies ahead, especially in the United States where coronavirus cases continue to break grim records in our country’s real-world version of a repeating nightmare. But if we can take a page out of Sarah’s book, we have no choice but to storm ahead and hope that we’ve done enough to carry us through to the other side. And if we want to lay back and crack open a red can of Akupara beer, we might as well try to enjoy ourselves while we’re passing the time.

Like Palm Springs? Try these other nihilist comedies.

Grade: BLiJuly 18, 2020