It’s not going to be easy to find this picture in your local
theater, but I’m writing about it anyway, because it’s good and worth seeking
out. At the end of the review, I’ll provide a link that will help you determine
if the film is or soon will be playing in your area. If not, you can put it on
your “wait for the streaming video or dvd” list.
Keep the Change is a New York romantic comedy about two misfits
who find each other and fall in love. But it’s not your ordinary rom-com,
because the two lovers – David (Brandon Polansky) and Sarah (Samantha Elisofon)
- are not quite ordinary. Each is on the autism spectrum. Although autism can
be manifested in myriad ways, this means that David and Sarah, each in their own manner, are pretty awkward
in the social skills department. As if finding a romantic partner isn’t hard
enough as it is (even for so-called neuro-typical people).
“That’s interesting,” you’re probably saying to yourself, “but
why would I want to watch a picture about those
people”? Hang on. I admit that I
initially felt some reservations, some emotional unease absorbing first David’s,
then Sarah’s social inelegance over the first few minutes. Somehow, their innate awkwardness, their difference, made me feel a little creepy. I think perhaps watching others stumble or
fail in social situations reminds me of my own occasional feelings of
inadequacy or embarrassment in such situations, something I’d rather avoid or
forget. Soon, however, as I got to know these characters a little better, I
found them to be surprisingly charming, interesting, and even attractive; people who, like all of us, are looking for love, understanding and acceptance.
David is a thirty-something young man from a wealthy upper-class
family – the kind that Katherine Hepburn might have belonged to, summering
close to New York City at their Connecticut estate, and wintering down in “Boca”. He has inherited the superficial sophistication of his breed, but
scratch the surface and he’s always striking out. David desperately wants a
girlfriend; chatting on the online dating services to which he subscribes, he
sometimes does okay; but he never gets past a first date - sometimes not past
the first five minutes of a date. David also wants to be somebody, and calls himself a filmmaker, but there’s little to show
for that. His family understands that he’s a bit weird, but he’s never been acknowledged
to have a specific problem. Mother (Jessica Walter, who else?) wouldn’t dream
that there could be anything seriously deficient in her son. Thus, David's got a special, oddly ingratiating version of the “my
family doesn’t understand me” syndrome.
David is moody and often discouraged, but he can be a charmer.
He loves to tell jokes., and he’s got a million of ‘em. As we quickly discover,
the problem is he has no sense of propriety, what’s appropriate and what’s not.
This and an inability to read his audience apparently got him into a bit of trouble
with the law. In a recent encounter with the police that must have gotten a bit
out of hand, he inappropriately spun out one of his witticisms with a punchline
equating cops with pigs, resulting in an arrest and a threat of jail – to avoid
which David has been mandated to take a four week program at Connections, a social center for adults
with autism. At first, he’s appalled to see the other participants, who seem,
on the surface to be more damaged than he is, and he recoils – believing that those
people aren’t normal, with the underlying assumption, that he, on the other
hand, is. Self-awareness has not been his
strong-suit.
And it’s at Connections
that we meet Sarah, in many ways David’s opposite. She’s a twenty-something woman who’s the life of the party, an enthusiastic member of this community. Everyone’s her friend She’s not worldly or sophisticated, does not come from money, doesn’t understand David’s jokes or his cynicism. Unlike David, she (and many of the others in the program) knows she has autism, and – if this is the right way to put it - has embraced her circumstance and the services provided by Connections, determined to get the most
out of life regardless. We learn less about her background, but what we see
right away is that Sarah is a dynamo.
Dynamos tend to throw off sparks, and eventually Sarah’s
ignite something in David, and the story takes off. What follows is a
delightful, needless to say quirky, love story with its ups and downs,
screw-ups and obstacles, good times and bad. And, it is fascinating to watch
each character change and grow under the influence of the other. I for one got
sucked in and was rooting for these two. But the road is never easy, and I’ll leave the
narrative there.
Keep the Change is a sweet,
sensitively made film worth seeing. While it breaks no new structural ground in
the rom-com genre, it’s unusual characters do bring a special poignancy to the
proceedings, along with a lesson – or at least a reminder: People on the
spectrum want and need love and community just as we all do, maybe even more so.
Their condition makes finding these things more challenging, but no less interesting.
First time writer-director Rachel Israel had everything to
do with the success of this little sparkler. She conceived it, spent time learning
about and working with the autism community, and found Polansky and Elisofon –
both of whom are themselves on the spectrum and both of whom give engaging,
empathetic, attractive performances as David and Sarah. She also populated the Connections class with non-actor actors,
all with autism themselves, whom we also get to know a little and appreciate.
Jessica Walter is terrific as David’s mom, and veteran Tibor Feldman likewise
in the smaller role as his dad.
Cinematographer Zachary Halberd does an exceptional job
capturing the look and beats of the Big Apple that natives and New York lovers
will appreciate (and others should enjoy as well).
Which brings me back to the beginning. If you like good romantic
comedies you really should check out Keep the Change. The distributors (Kino
Lorber) aren’t making it easy, however. This is about the most limited “limited
release” I’ve seen in quite awhile. It
is or will shortly be playing at a few “select”
theaters around the country. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example it’s playing
at single theater, the Roxie in SF and
for one week only (concluding Thursday March 29th, I believe. It’s
also playing at single theaters in Chicago, Washington DC, Baltimore and a few
other cities for the same brief runs. Then it opens in Fairfax, VA, and three
other towns for a week, then Brooklyn and Scottsdale for a few days, and so
on. You get the idea.
Click here to
see the current release schedule.
Presumably Keep the Change will be released to
streaming services and on dvd in a few months, but I’m guessing. If you can
catch it on the big screen, I think you’ll be happy.
93 minutes
Grade: A-
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