Obvious Child
Director: Gillian Robespierre
Writer: Gillian Robespierre
Based on: her short film
Cast: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Paul Briganti, Gaby Hoffmann, Stephen Singer, Richard Kind, Polly Draper
Part of: FrauenFilmTage
Seen on: 28.02.2015

Plot:
Donna (Jenny Slate) spends her days working in a bookshop and her nights performing as a stand-up. But life really isn’t working out for her right now – the bookshop is closing, her boyfriend dumped her, her mother (Polly Draper) wants her to become more serious. When Donna has a little break-down on stage, she decides that she really needs to get drunk. She meets Max (Jake Lacy), a guy she usually wouldn’t even approach since he’s way too goody two shoes for her taste. But in this case, they get drunk together and end up sleeping with each other. Afterwards Donna is mortified, even more so, when she realizes that she’s pregnant, so she decides to get an abortion.

Obivous Child was funny, sweet and approaches the topic of abortion in a light-hearted manner – something you don’t get to see everyday. I really enjoyed it and in particular, Jenny Slate.

[Slight SPOILERS]

Jenny Slate is not only ridiculously pretty, she is a very talented actress and she really makes Donna work as a character. Because that could have gone very wrong. Usually I really don’t like the perpetually immature characters that will get laughing fits when somebody farts, but then again those characters are usually men and it is a pretty radical experience in itself to have the woman be the immature one in a relationship without that immaturity becoming a reason for the man to make all her decisions for her.

And that is a big part of how the film approaches the topic in a new way: Donna might be immature – which is a huge reason of why she should not have a child at this stage – but nobody in this film ever doubts her ability to decide whether she wants to have an abortion or not. It is clear that she is the one in charge – and despite her immaturity, she knows that, too and deals with it.

The other part is that it removes the mysticism around abortions. It acknowledges that abortions don’t only ever happen to other people. Donna’s friend had an abortion, Donna’s mother had an abortion. It happens. And when it does happen, it is not necessarily something that will leave women traumatized and crying for the child they have lost. It’s not even a huge medical procedure. It can just be the right decision in a given situation, and it doesn’t enven need to be the end of the relationship – in fact, in the end it is the abortion that makes a relationship between Donna and Max possible at all. Who knew that an abortion could be romantic?

But I didn’t only like how the film handled the topic, it was generally hilarious and gave off the perfect RomCom vibe, which makes it easy to lean back and enjoy it.

Summarizing: extremely funny and smart.