Cinequest 19: How To Be...

Screening tonight and on Monday at the California Theatre as part of Cinequest 19 is this British indie comedy about the anxieties of an affable young man named Art. Here’s our take on it:

How to Be...

Director: Oliver Irving

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Powell Jones, Rebecca Pidgeon, Michael Irving, Alisa Arnah, Johnny White, Mike Pearce

After seeing Robert Pattinson swoop through cinemas last year as the protagonist of Twilight (all brooding vampire angst and cheekbones that could slice any teen girl’s heart in two), it’s refreshing to see him fill out the role of Art in How to Be... (all lank hair, ill-fitting grocery clerk uniform and body language that screams “morose.”). Art is a depressed twenty-something experiencing an existential crisis. His girlfriend (Alisa Arnah) has just dumped him, his disinterested parents (Rebecca Pidgeon and Michael Irving) barely acknowledge his presence when he moves back home, and his idiosyncratic buddies care more about making music than making Art feel better. When Art reads self-help book It’s Not Your Fault he believes he has found the solution to his misery, and uses what’s left of his inheritance money to bring the book’s elderly Canadian author to his London home to fix his family’s dysfunction.

While the middle-class melancholy of a young struggling musician who still lives with his parents may not make for the most earth-shattering subject matter, Art’s painfully funny coming-of-age is charming in its impossibly awkward authenticity. Dr. Ellington’s (Powell Jones) presence as the sanguine self-help guru at many inopportune moments makes for some of the film’s funniest scenes, as do Art’s conversations and interactions with his fellow muso buddies Ronny (Johnny White) and Nikki (Mike Pearce).

The film has some problems with its flow and timing, and some scenes that just don’t really seem to gel, but on the whole it offers an amusing journey through the somewhat trivial but nonetheless tangible tumult of a young man in middle-class London.