My husband and I don't always agree on movies but we watched Untogether two nights in a row and really enjoyed it. It's a movie for adults and it is literate and funny and sexy and musical. Besides being a novelist, Emma Forrest, the writer/director, was a journalist who reported on music and musicians. Hence, excellent music choices accompany the story, which also happens to be beautifully filmed. Forrest knows the literature game and gave us a nuanced portrayal of that world, which sure isn't filled with Jane Austens. Its denizens are smart and predatory and worth watching. All the actors did a fine job in roles that we might not have seen them in before. Sure, Jamie Dornan has a brief fling with a pair of stockings as a sexual prop but his character is nothing like the character he's most associated with. (Note to next director: Please do not hide Dornan's face with a beard. It's telling a lot of Untogether's publicity shows him without the beard.) Who knew Alice Eve could be so corporate and vicious? The Kirke sisters were great too, playing younger or more former junkie-ish than their real selves. Both of them have beautiful lips and know how to use them. (An actor's lips can convey so much when they aren't covered in hair.) Ben Mendelsohn, as a former pop star well into anonymous middle age, was touchingly boyish and sensitive. I gave Untogether a 10 to counteract the unjustified 1s that lazy, or maybe illiterate, reviewers gave it. (Note to naysayers: If you give a horrible rating, be prepared to justify it.) In actuality, its an 8 and well worth the time of adults who like their movies to have a story.
Review of Untogether
