Review: ‘Life Partners’ takes a harsh look at maturity

Director: Susanna Fogel

Stars: Gillian Jacobs, Leighton Meester

Rating: R

The semi-serious female friendship comedy “Life Partners” is more wise than it is funny, which is far from the worst problem to have. Gillian Jacobs is Paige to Leighton Meester’s Sasha — a straight girl and lesbian, respectively, in a committed platonic relationship with each other. They share the kind of union that borders on (and basically is) co-dependent, the type that seems more fulfilling than a romantic one precisely because it’s borne out of purest comfort. Spectacularly disastrous, or simply dull, actual relationships end and they can always get together to laugh them off.

What Paige and Sasha have is so wonderful that, just like movies that open with lovers in full-on adoration, you know the good times are about to end. Sure enough, Paige soon runs afoul of Tim (Adam Brody), a nice, charming and only mildly off-putting guy who’s stable and caring enough to make the nearly 30-something Paige think he might be close enough to the one. That means less hang-time with Sasha, who’s still stuck in the stage where her relationships are ill-advised and blessfully short-lived. Right on cue both adopt a smugness about their respected life choices that may break up the band.

At times “Life Partners” can feel like it’s running through a readymade trajectory, elucidating a thesis about getting older. It’s not that we can see the semi-happy ending coming a mile away; no matter how blunt and realistic this is, it’s too L.A.- sunny and agreeable a movie to go full dark, or even full sad. But it sometimes seems to be merely checking off points. They’re smart points, and ones that hang at times uneasily over the bright proceedings. It’s refreshing to see how Brody’s invading dude is treated: He has a weird habit of loudly quoting “The Big Lebowski” — a tic that clearly once would have sent Paige for the hills. At her age, though, she knows it’s minor enough to put up with. At the same time the film asks, without need for a clean answer, whether our non-sexual relationships are more fulfilling than our romantic ones, and why some of us wind up shacking up, sometimes exclusively, with the latter.

Schematic as it can be, “Life Partners” still has a lot of funky life, thanks to its two leads. Jacobs and Meester have the kind of lived-in, comfortable chemistry you can’t fake — all the more incredible since they met right before filming. There aren’t a ton of decent laughs in the script, but most of the chuckles come from the two leads riffing. When they’re torn apart by maturity, it hurts because we’ve seen how well they get on, and we know that we’re programmed, both socially and biologically, to desire more than easy company with someone who totally gets us.