Together Together review – smart and earnest ode to platonic love

Platonic love is one of life’s greatest, purest pleasures, yet it's rarely explored with the same depth as romantic love on the big screen. Nikole Beckwith’s earnest, thoughtful Together Together fills this gap, putting a platonic bond front and centre with the same level of care usually reserved for romantic partners.

The sweet, deceptively deep comedy sees 40-year-old Matt (a career-best Ed Helms, his Hangover days long behind him) strike up a friendship with Anna (Patti Harrison, a revelation) after he hires her to carry his child. It’s her second pregnancy, the second time she’s giving away a child, simply not ready and not willing to be a mother. “Why are you doing this alone?” she asks Matt, who calmly replies: “Because I am alone, that’s why.”

Loneliness is rarely given respect without a level of melodrama. But Beckwith, who also wrote the film, shades Matt and Anna’s respective circumstances with an empathetic understanding of the reasons romantic companionship sometimes just doesn’t find you. These characters don’t feel sorry for themselves because of it – loss is something they’re acutely aware of, but their friendship is now put front and centre. This bond, this celebration of a different kind of love, is wonderful to watch.

Together Together could have quickly devolved into a quirky, grating offbeat comedy, poking fun at the dysfunction of Matt and Anna’s relationship – but Beckwith is much smarter than that. A gentle, melancholy piano score from Jónsi and Sigur Rós collaborator Alex Somers sets the tone, infusing the story with tenderness. Yet the script is always funny: a brainstorm session over gender-neutral names (“Radio? Male. Soda? Female”) and a crash-course in tampon insertion make for some of the film’s best gags, while the more sincere emotions – love, sadness, fear – always rings true.

The life that Matt’s baby will live will fill his own existence with every conceivable emotion, but it’s not the life at the heart of Together Together: the most beautiful and important creation here is his relationship with Anna. Friendship can transform, weaken, and disappear from so many of our lives as we grow older – yet Beckwith tells us that, sometimes, this form of love can be enough to make you feel entirely whole.

Together Together was screened as part of the Sundance Film Festival 2021. It is now available to rent or buy on various streaming services.