Review of Digging for Fire (2015) by Joetaeb D — 05 Sep 2015

As one of the founders of the indie film mumblecore movement, Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies) has always been attracted to the spaces between words, what's often left unsaid between people who tell one another they're in love. In Digging For Fire, his best feature yet, a mesmerizing take on Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage, Swanberg's films is awash in symbolism, but don't think this is some dense intellectual jerkoff session. The movie is elevated with buoyant humor and deeply felt sexual tension laced with bitter black comedy.

New Girl's Jake Johnson, who co-wrote the sharp script with Swanberg, is Tim, currently housesitting in the Hollywood Hills with his wife Lee (Rosemarie DeWitt) and their three-year-old son (Jude Swanberg, the director's child). Lee, an aerobics instructor, has moved in as a favor to oen of her clients. Tim, a gym teacher for a public school, is supposed to be doing the family taxes, thus the receipts piled up on the table, a dreary symbol of marital angst and responsibility. Tim procrastinates by taking a walk around the house and discovers a gun and a human bone. There's now mystery and possibly menace in the air.

Lee is not interested in joining her husband on his quest for any more earthly remains so she takes off with their son to see her parents and finds herself going out on the town with a dashing stranger (Orlando Bloom of all people). Tim remains at the house and invites over some friends, including reliable Phil (Mike Birbiglia) and kooky Ray (Sam Rockwell). Also in tow are two women in the form of Alicia (Anna Kendrick), perfectly willing to frolic nude in the pool and Max (Brie Larson) who aids Tim in his dig and returns the next day for a date that borders on infidelity. Swanberg cuts between these two liaisons to the score of 'Li'l Red Riding Hood' by Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs.

Questions of sex, identity and more come up as well as the shifting parameters of marriage and parenthood. Swanberg's usual critics will likely gripe over the loose, improv atmosphere that produces roiling feelings that never quite gel. The provocations and wonderful performances are hard to ignore. Johnson, so good in Swanberg's Drinking Buddies, expertly gets us inside Tim's troubled head and heart, as does the movie. Beautifully shot in 35mm by the talented Ben Richardson and set to a hypnotic and irresistible score from Dan Romer, Digging For Fire walks the tantalizing edge of revelation and drops us there to process everything we see and hear through the mirror of our own strengths and anxieties. It's damn good filmmaking. See it now on Video On Demand.