In the dead of night comes a knock on the door of young marrieds Ben and Anna. The unannounced guest in Lynn Shelton’s whip-smart, low-budget comedy, “Humpday” — about two guys who truth-or-dare themselves into quite a pickle — is Andrew.
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It’s been years since he and college buddy Ben have seen each other, but their jesting camaraderie remains.
Jauntily wearing a porkpie hat and a slacker smile, Andrew (Joshua Leo- nard) quickly comes to resemble a hep Cat in the Hat.
His arrival brings excitement. It also upends the household.
An artist without a portfolio, Andrew is the guy who traipses through developing nations hooking up with paramours and learning folk hangover cures.
For his part, Ben (Mark Duplass), with his sweet grin and considerate demeanor, has settled down into a kind and frisky marriage. He and Anna (Alycia Delmore) are plotting a family.
“Humpday” opens with a scene of the comfy couple that is as believable in its banter as it is sweet in its intimacy.
The deepest pleasures of Shelton’s third (and best realized) feature come not from the inane situation Ben and Andrew find themselves in once they agree to make a video for a local alternative porn fest.
Instead, joys bubble up from the persuasive, consistent intimacy revealed by the writer-director and her actors, who collaborated on the script.
The film comes by its R rating honestly. The dialogue is peppered with raw language. Discussions and depictions of sexuality are natural but frank. Yes, there are sex toys. There’s also hemp.
“Humpday” is arguably the best of the so-deemed “mumblecore” genre of 20-somethings talking and talking and talking — sometimes about life, but mostly about relationships. (Coming soon: mumblecore pioneer Andrew Bujalski’s latest, “Beeswax,” set to play at the Starz FilmCenter in October.)
Ben and Andrew’s dilemma may seem far-fetched — though an alt-weekly newspaper in Seattle does indeed hold an annual amateur porn fest — but the dialogue between mates and friends is wonderfully credible.
Bravo to Shelton and Seattle-based actress Delmore for making Anna a character who is much more than meets the eye.
Looking like a softer Zooey Deschanel, Delmore must maneuver a character who could easily have been treated as a killjoy or as a straight man to the movie’s hah-hahs.
Anna’s moments of cranky clarity are a bracing tonic.
Ben and Andrew represent for each other the byways not taken. In Shelton’s bohemian-tinted comedy, there are real if mysterious reasons why we become the people we become: Some marry, some wander, some are straight, some are gay.
When the film premiered at Sundance in January, a fellow critic told me he found Ben and Andrew’s brinksmanship homophobic. I think not.
Shelton has made a wise film that takes not only desire and sexual identity seriously, but also fondness between straight friends even more so.
Nudged gently by the score, the film’s final scenes begin like a version of “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” set in a hotel.
Will guns be drawn, so to speak? Will Ben and Andrew make a porno?
We’re not telling. But getting to the showdown is a fine and funny journey.
“HUMPDAY.”
R for some strong sexual content, pervasive language and a scene of drug use. 1 hour, 35 minutes. Written and directed by Lynn Shelton; photography by Benjamin Kasulke; starring Mark Duplass, Alycia Delmore, Joshua Leonard, Lynn Shelton. Opens today at the Regency Theatres Tamarac Square.
