‘Everything okay?’: No, almost everything is bad in this romantic comedy with Dakota Johnson as a late lesbian | Culture

The main character of All good? (Am I ok?) She is a woman as spectacular as Dakota Johnson who, at 32 years old, and faced with the news that her best friend is leaving the city, decides to come out of the closet and confess that she is a lesbian, even though she does not feel capable of taking the step of sleeping with another woman. women. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) works as a receptionist at a beauty center and is attracted to one of the masseuses at work (Kiersey Clemons), while Jane (Sonoya Mizuno), her best friend, plans her new life. her in London.

All good? plays the cards of a girl’s romantic comedy that seems open to exploring archetypes; in this case, that of the woman-calamity faced with her frustration and her new sexuality. But everything that could be interesting from that premise ends up working out as badly as the life of its clumsy protagonist. Written by Lauren Pomerantz, known as the show’s screenwriter The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The film is directed by Stephanie Allynne and Tig Notaro, actresses and comedians who are also a couple and make their debut with this film. In a strange way, the film is infected by the passivity that characterizes its central character and the blockage he suffers could well define a hieratic film, which goes around and around without apparent blood in the veins.

The long dialogues can be sharp but they turn out to be cold and mechanical, like monologues closed in on themselves that expose the paralysis of the character without ever revealing his background or any other. As a parody, only the masseuse that Lucy is so attracted to comes out well, perhaps because in the face of desire there is little to add. The star, Dakota Johnson, is always a guarantee, but her fears (of rejection, of loneliness) are just the commonplaces that invade a script as neat as it is bland. Beyond her decision to come out of the closet at this moment, we end up knowing very little (well, she is also a frustrated painter) about a character who lacks life beyond her inability for adventures.

The center of everything is the friendship between Lucy and Jane, but it is difficult to find chemistry between the two. Sonoya Mizuno’s character is even more dull than Dakota Johnson’s, but also the way they relate to each other, talking all the time about sex and hookups, how poor Lucy doesn’t finish any encounter, seems more typical of two fifteen-year-olds who of two women in their thirties. Both represent a caricature of Los Angeles (a place where, apparently, life passes by eating muffins and sweating on yoga mats), but without transgressing in that parody.

The underlying conflicts—Jane’s change of city, the separation of the two friends, the doses of platonic love—don’t have the grace of comedies of their style that are much more intelligent and crazy, like My best friend’s Weddingor deeper, like Girlfriends. All good? It delves into the dilemma of a friendship threatened by changes and distance, but its drama comes to almost nothing and is resolved in the worst possible way. In short, almost everything wrong.

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