Kris Swanberg takes a big leap into the independent mainstream with her delicate and beautiful third film, "Unexpected." The tagline might sound like a gimmick: A 30-year-old Chicago high school teacher and one of her students discover they're pregnant around the same time, but Swanberg's film remains utterly realistic. Small-scale and affectionate in the best senses, this is accomplished work that deserves special consideration in the independent market, and the care of a distributor savvy enough to market a story made by and about women.
Surprisingly, for something as fundamental to human existence as pregnancy, few movies address the experience head-on, and the ones that do are often comedies or horror movies. That's just one way that "Unexpected" immediately establishes itself as something different.
Director: David Hunt
Writer: Rodney Patrick Vaccaro
Stars: Anna Camp, Joseph Mazzello, Neil Flynn
Sam enjoys his job teaching science at an inner-city school, but the building is about to close and the staff are told to look elsewhere for employment. A listing for her dream job, as a museum staff member who sets the curriculum for the district, gives her some hope, but she quickly gives up on exploring the opportunity upon discovering that she is pregnant.
That's not something she and her boyfriend John (Anders Holm) were planning, and Sam breaks down in tears before breaking the news. Taking it easy, John proposes the next morning over pancakes and headed to court for a forced wedding, a decision that goes down badly with Sam's judgmental mother (Elizabeth McGovern). Looking for someone to connect with, Sam discovers that one of her valedictorian students, Jasmine (Gail Bean), is also pregnant and immediately offers her support, blurring the line between professional and personal.
The little "drama" in the picture stems from Sam's ambivalence about giving up her career to become a mother, and Jasmine faces a similar choice between going to college or being there for her baby, as the father (Aaron Nelson) needs to "grow up" before he is ready to take on any responsibility.
"Unexpected" is not a movie about grand dramatic turns or conflict, though the conflict emerges organically through Sam and Jasmine's contrasting backgrounds, personalities, and life experience. Everything on screen has the well-observed quality of a great documentary, enlivened by a rich sense of humor and the fundamental decency of each character. Swanberg and co-writer Megan Mercier have crafted an incredibly generous film that shows its heart on its sleeve but never feels corny or even sentimental.
There's a specificity to every little detail: Jasmine mixes pickle juice with a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheeto crumbs for a concoction that makes Sam so sick she has to stop the car; John can't contain her delight at finding pink dinosaur stickers to decorate her nursery; Sam's mother lashes out when her daughter rejects old baby clothes, which make the characters feel like real people. In that sense, "Unexpected" has a kinship to an all-time pregnancy-related great Sundance title, Phil Morrison's "Junebug."
It's also a rare work on women's lives that allows the main characters to be fully formed. Viewers really get to know these two women, from their time at work/school to their home life, their family histories, and their adorable imperfections. Eighty-some minutes in his company feels too brief.
The cast couldn't be better. After years on the television series "How I Met Your Mother" and a minor role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Smulders heralds herself as a full-fledged movie star with a role lived with love. Whether she's interrupting a classroom fight, chatting up a colleague after a union protest, or putting a particularly vivid spin on the old movie installment cliché, Smulders misses the mark.
Ditto for newcomer Bean, a theater veteran making her big feature film debut, who embodies Jasmine as a vibrant, self-assured young woman with a good head on her shoulders and the ability to read Sam's privilege without Stop trusting their advice. While Jasmine is black and Sam is white, their differences are never down to race, with age and economic status being the key factors.
Holm and McGovern are equally strong in smaller roles: Holm as the picture of a supportive husband and McGovern as a more understanding mother than her daughter realizes.
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