What Happens Later (15)

Businessman Bill is bound for Austin for a meeting with his boss but bad weather strands him at the same airport as his old flame, wellness practitioner Willa, who is en route to Boston to perform a cleansing ceremony on a newly-divorced gal pal with her omnipresent rainstick. Fittingly, they are headed in opposite directions. Outside, the weather is frightful and inside the terminal, the temperature is initially lukewarm as the couple trade pleasantries and open old wounds.

LondonNet Film Review

What Happens Later (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Towards the conclusion of Meg Ryan’s second directorial feature, a rom-com dedicated to the memory of When Harry Met Sally… screenwriter Nora Ephron, David Duchovny’s exhausted businessman loses patience with the droll public address system at the Midwestern airport where he has been stranded by a snowstorm. “What’s the joke? What’s the point?” he rages into thin air. We could justifiably ask the same questions of What Happens Later, a dramatically uneven two-hander adapted from Steven Dietz’s stage play Shooting Star, which engineers a meet-cute between ex-lovers at “some little regional airport”, 25 years after they last saw each other…

Ryan and Duchovny’s old flames – wiser, crankier and still emotionally tethered to each other – remonstrate and reminisce as the tannoy announcer (Hal Liggett) issues generic advice about missed connections that directly references characters’ current states. Airport signage magically dispenses guidance to the bickering duo as night falls and flurries of snow provide a picturesque backdrop to sweet yet contrived vignettes. Consequently, we are treated to a dreamy, prolonged sequence of the reunited lovers driving around a deserted terminal late at night in a customer services cart and dancing along a corridor to Lightning Seeds’ euphoric anthem Pure as if no-one else is watching. Appealing screen chemistry between Ryan and Duchovny can’t convince us to care about whether their 50-something singletons should fasten seatbelts for a second chance at something meaningful.

Businessman Bill (Duchovny) is bound for Austin for a meeting with his boss but bad weather strands him at the same airport as wellness practitioner Willa (Ryan), en route to Boston to perform a cleansing ceremony on a newly-divorced gal pal with her omnipresent rainstick. Fittingly, they are headed in opposite directions. Outside, the weather is frightful and inside the terminal, the temperature is initially lukewarm as the couple trade pleasantries and open old wounds.

Bill discloses he has been diagnosed with anticipatory anxiety and laments the disarray of the modern world (the ubiquity of plastics, the death of print journalism). “It’s kind of a buzz-kill, Bill,” replies Willa, who nurses her own regrets about the past and unfulfilled dream of raising a large family in a cabin in the woods. As the unscheduled layover stretches into the night, Bill and Willa lower their guards.

Co-written by playwright Dietz, Ryan and Kirk Lynn, What Happens Later shoots for the wistful self-reflection and introspection of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy but something gets lost in transit. The film’s stage origins are evident but Ryan generates kinetic energy from two shooting locations (Crystal Bridges Museum and the Northwest Arkansas National Airport) to give the impression that characters are in motion while, in truth, they are stuck in a rut. Alas, we get bogged down with them.

– Jo Planter