Matt and Mara review – lo-fi answer to When Harry Met Sally offers uncertain relationship

This lo-fi Canadian dramedy feels like an excursion into nothing much, as a vague college friendship is rekindled
Peter BradshawMon 21 Oct 2024 02.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 21 Oct 2024 02.41 EDTShareHere is a toothless, aimless dramedy from Canada, a lo-fi excursion into nothing very interesting; it’s what would happen if Harry met Sally and maybe they weren’t meant to be lovers or even friends and were both a bit bland. Mara (Deragh Campbell) is married with a baby and teaches a creative writing class, and is astonished one day when her one-time platonic male best friend in college, or unresolved potential lover, impulsively shows up at the educational institution where she is employed. This is Matt, played by Matt Johnson (whom I last saw playing a wacky tech bro in Blackberry).
Matt is now a successful author; Mara isn’t. But it doesn’t stop them resuming their intimate, goofing-around friendship, which she keeps secret from her musician husband. Matt is allowed to be a guest speaker at Mara’s class and is weirdly vague and naive about Philip Roth, and it’s not clear if this is an intentional comic effect. Mara appears almost to want to have sex with Matt at his apartment one day and loses her nerve; there’s a kiss at Niagara Falls on their way to a creative writing convention but then Mara books them separate rooms at their hotel and Matt goes off with another woman; this makes Mara rejected and hurt and finally neither Matt nor Mara know what to do with their feelings, which are painful and real and yet also strangely tiresome and insipid.
There’s one nice moment: at a dinner party, feeling nettled at the music-based conversation of her husband and his friends, Mara declares that she really doesn’t like music: just as some people feel the singing moments in a musical are unnatural and dumb, she feels like that about any music when it starts up. Does she really believe that? It would be interesting if Mara stuck to her transgressive guns on this point. Yet there’s a later scene in which she’s listening to one of her husband’s compositions and caresses her hand; a moment of forgiveness … or understanding music after all … maybe.
Matt and Mara is at the ICA, London from 25 October.