Rating: NR | Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: April 5th, 2024 (UK) / April 25th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Music Box Films
Director(s): Matt Winn
Writer(s): James Handel and Matt Winn

You don’t have the luxury of a conscience right now.

Tom (Alan Tudyk) is readying the meal and Sarah (Shirley Henderson) is preparing to host when the phone rings. Richard (Rufus Sewell) and Beth (Olivia Williams) are still on schedule, but they’re bringing an extra guest: Jessica (Indira Varma). It shouldn’t be a problem because they are all friends—and have been since college. But it is a problem because there’s history behind her place as their fifth wheel. Jessica wanted Richard, but he chose Beth. She’d been with Tom (and still flirts with him), but he chose Sarah. The reason is the same thing that makes her so alluring. While an unpredictability and wild nature is something for them to covet and be jealous about, it isn’t conducive to sustaining a life.

What this quartet don’t realize, however, is that this truth is something Jessica feels too. Whereas they could escape her whirlwind by embracing each other, she is stuck wondering if it was all worth it since the chaos and fun ultimately made way for loneliness and depression. So, in many respects, Jessica envies their comfort and stability too. She doesn’t want to always be the screw-up amongst her friends—the ones they look down upon and make faces that she knows means “there she goes again.” Suddenly becoming the talk of the town with a best-selling memoir may have helped even the playing field insofar as having something to hang her hat on, but it still isn’t enough to satisfy her soul.

Matt Winn’s The Trouble with Jessica (co-written by James Handel) is a collision course years in the making, yet still full of secrets and petty rivalries. It’s difficult for Sarah to congratulate Jessica on her success when she resents her for always undermining her relationship with Tom. It’s impossible for Jessica to pass up an opportunity to call out the hypocrisy of her friends even if it means telling a joke in poorer taste than the one she’s commenting on. And, just as her star starts to rise, these two couples are crashing down to Earth. Tom has overextended his finances to the point where selling their home is the only lifeline he has left. And Richard and Sarah are treading water emotionally thanks to their immoral lives becoming a necessity to maintain materialistic pleasures.

Sarah and Beth tell each other everything. Tom and Richard do the same. So, Jessica becomes the odd person out—a burdensome distraction they refuse to either drop from their lives or honestly engage with a desire to truly be her friend. It should therefore come as no surprise that she does what she does nor that she does is in full view of them, knowing they’re too self-absorbed to notice. The intent is not to implode their lives in the aftermath because Jessica truly believes they’re on solid enough ground to endure her selfish pursuit of not being alone. One would be correct to say she’s as much to blame for their strained friendships by not knowing the pain they were all in too (not to mention her role in creating it). The point being: she’s not a victim. None of them are.

This is why the black comedy proves so successful. These are all reprehensible people in the vein that we are all reprehensible people. They aren’t the ultra-rich (Amber Rose Revah’s Ellen and Sylvester Groth’s Klaus eventually enter to ensure this fact), but they are wealthy enough to live with a certain privilege that makes them feel invincible until the rug gets pulled from beneath their feet. That means Beth can lambast her husband for defending rapists in court even though she needs him to keep doing it to afford her wigs. Sarah can act like she is righteous when compared to Jessica and then turn around to coldly calculate the ways in which to exploit and manipulate a horrible tragedy to her advantage. These people all know the difference between right and wrong, but none are above moving that line when it suits them.

I don’t want to spoil what that tragedy is (I went in blind solely based on the impressive cast without watching a trailer, so it might not be a spoiler at all considering how crucial it is to the narrative), so I’ll merely say that Tom, Sarah, Richard, and Beth are thrust into a moral debate about survival. What are they willing to do for their friends? What are they willing to risk for themselves? Are the people in our lives truly indelible pieces or familiar objects to be moved around and discarded when a situation arises that renders them expendable? And how powerful a motivating force is fear in the face of inevitable consequences? Because even those dead set against following Sarah’s admittedly callous plan find themselves volunteering their fealty once the moment arises.

Winn and Handel do their best to push each character’s hand by parading a revolving door of new “guests” into the equation at the most inopportune moments. First, it’s a busybody neighbor (Anne Reid). Then it’s a genial pair of policemen (Jonathan Livingstone and David Schaal are a delight when confronted with the ever-present “clafoutis in the room”). Add Revah and Groth for the largest stakes considering what they stand for as both a way out for our leads and a mirror for their misdeeds and there’s never a breath in the action. It’s arguments, appalled dismay, boiled over frustration, and deer-in-the-headlights silence, rinse and repeat. Will they do what they must or what they should? Will they be able to live with the guilt attached to both options?

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Indira Varma, Olivia Williams, Alan Tudyk, Shirley Henderson, and Rufus Sewell in THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA. Courtesy of Music Box Films.