AFF: Paperback: Romantic-Comedy Done Right

Editor’s Note: The following review is part of our coverage of the 2015 Austin Film Festival. For more information on the festival visit austinfilmfestival.com and follow AFF on Twitter at @austinfilmfest.

For so long, one of my greatest dreams as a fan of film was to attend the Sundance Film Festival. As I plunged headlong into my film obsession, I pillaged the catalog rental section of my local video store (because those were still a thing), plumbed into the depths of IMDB trivia, and burned through any book I could find. As I’ve grown and read on the changing of Sundance into a swag and celebrity fest, what I realized is that I wanted to go to the Sundance of the 90s. Back in the time of Soderbergh, Smith, and Tarantino; a time when independent cinema was recognized as something groundbreaking.

Now indie film is something different entirely, a multi-headed beast that doesn’t struggle for breath in the manner that it once did. The grit has smoothed and the voices aren’t as singular. It’s not worse, it’s just different. Yet somehow, a voice like Adam Bowers and his latest film Paperback, make you feel like maybe it wasn’t that long ago.

What’s most surprising about Paperback isn’t that it’s funny or well made, rather that it’s able to so covertly deploy what would be romantic-comedy cliché in the hands of a lesser filmmaker.

What’s most surprising about Paperback isn’t that it’s funny or well made, rather that it’s able to so covertly deploy what would be romantic-comedy cliché in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. If you were to strip the film of its wit, its sarcasm, its honesty (which would be to dismantle it almost entirely), its bones are made of the familiar and expected. It is a tried and true base, a base that the greater film industrial complex has been bathing in crazy female stereotypes, bad writing, and Katherine Heigl and trying to shove down our collective gullets for years. Hell, Paperback’s first scene is literally “boy meets girl.” But in the case of Paperback, it feels fresh. In a way, it’s as if writer-director-star Adam Bowers is looking at this dreck of diminishing box office returns and saying, “I can do better.”

Because it isn’t that the romantic-comedy genre as a whole is bad, it’s just that it has become a dumping ground for lazy filmmaking. Great filmmakers like Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, and Frank Capra delivered classics within the genre. What makes the difference is that strength of voice, of character, and of story. While Bowers with his multi-hyphenate status and knowing self-deprecation will likely garner comparisons to Woody Allen, it seems a bit unfair to the freshness of his own voice. There is far more sarcasm and relevancy to Bowers than to Allen. Bowers is more accessible and less starkly intellectual. You can see yourself hanging out with him, where with Allen you just breathe a sigh of relief when he heads to his daily therapist appointment.

Paperback is a film built on the back of its writing and Bowers himself. Bowers has a fantastic self awareness in his writing and an ability to invoke his own voice so firmly into that of his characters that authenticity isn’t even a question. No matter how sharp the wit or dry the humor, the interactions between his characters end up feeling like genuine conversations rather than the product of typical cinematic build. He propels the story forward on the strength of his characters and the development within them that largely goes unspoken. In Paperback, the greatest moments aren’t the romantic ones between Bowers and Dreama Walker but rather those between Bowers’ Rob and Genevieve Jones’ Samantha. While throughout the film Rob claims Jason to be his best friend, it goes without saying that in actuality that title belongs to Samantha. Bowers and Jones have a delightful chemistry on screen that doesn’t bother with the pretense of romanticism. These are friends that will trade more insults than compliments. You don’t need to know any kind of deep backstory because everything you need is up there on the screen. The honesty of interaction is enough.

While Bowers with his multi-hyphenate status and knowing self-deprecation will likely garner comparisons to Woody Allen, it seems a bit unfair to the freshness of his own voice.

That isn’t to say that Paperback is without its flaws. As the film progresses it can occasionally fall prey to its own romantic-comedy conventions. In the third act some of the choices are driven by story rather than character motivation and as a consequence the laughs become fewer and farther between. But largely, Paperback and its fearless leader Adam Bowers refuse to succumb to mediocrity. It is a film removed from time, one that is a combination of 70s intellectualism, 90s indie auterism, and the sarcastic search for self that seems appropriate for today. Unlike its main character, Paperback constantly moves forward with self-deprecating smarts that will leave you with a silly grin on your face.

Someone should really let the studios know that this is how you do romantic-comedy.