Rating: NR | Runtime: 88 minutes
Release Date: January 27th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: IFC Films
Director(s): Cecilia Miniucchi
Writer(s): Cecilia Miniucchi

You rock.

While most people baked bread during COVID lockdown, Cecilia Miniucchi made a movie. Life Upside Down was shot remotely using iPads and iPhones at three different locations with stars Bob Odenkirk, Radha Mitchell, and Danny Huston presumedly setting up each scene to their director’s specifications.

Most conversations unfold on those same devices as Jonathan (Odenkirk) and Clarissa (Mitchell) yearn to continue the affair they began months previously while Paul (Huston) provides an outlet as his artist’s potential buyer and her professor’s confidant—all while dealing with his own romantic issues opposite Rosie Fellner’s Rita. They each want what they can’t have until mandated quarantine forces them to remember they already had it at home.

It sounds cliché because it is. Jonathan wants Clarissa because he’s grown bored of his wife only to discover he never stopped loving her. Clarissa wants Jonathan out of authentic love born under false pretenses, letting him constantly disappoint her when there’s potential to move on right outside her window (Cyrus Pahlavi’s guest-house tenant Darius).

And Paul wants to enjoy his time with Rita despite them being complete opposites—something that involuntarily feeds his pretentiousness to perpetually infantilize and dismiss her with every patronizing placation that leaves his mouth. Their respective relationships are going exactly where you guess from beginning. Yes, this is largely due to the production’s constraints, but that’s not necessarily an excuse if you went ahead with filming anyway.

The result plays less like a movie than a filmed exercise keeping the creative juices of those involved flowing at a time when their livelihood was at a standstill. Miniucchi tries to manufacture intrigue with a prologue shot after lockdown was lifted months later, but its real-time one-shot nature only adds to the awkwardness of the whole’s lo-fi rehearsal aesthetic.

It helps get us situated as far as who everyone is to everyone else (and explain why Jonathan’s wife’s face is never seen—because Odenkirk’s actual wife probably acted as a stand-in with Jeanie Lim dubbing lines in post), but the drama introduced is generic at best. So, watching these characters go through obvious motions in boredom ends up being boring itself. There’s a greater chance of experiencing PTSD from reliving that sense of isolation than finding any real emotional value.

---

Bob Odenkirk as “Jonathan”, Radha Mitchell as “Clarissa” in Cecilia Miniucchi’s LIFE UPSIDE DOWN. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.