Loitering With Intent

Struggling to write that all-so important screenplay that could define your career of the familiar backdrop to Adam Rapp’s Loitering With Intent, but rather than being an angst-fuelled drama, this delightfully freewheeling film impressively trades on its bucolic setting and scattershot mayhem resulting in a genial indie film that belies its low-budget roots.

The fact that the film also features charming support performances from Marisa Tomei and Sam Rockwell (who also feature in the producer credits) should help its potential to break out and receive further festival exposure.

The ‘head to the country to write’ routine is a tried-and-tested scenario, but when Raphael (Ivan Martin) and Dominic (Michael Godere) head into the idyll to craft the script that could finally crack their faltering acting careers there is a good deal of fun to be had. Martin and Godere also handled the script for Loitering With Intent, heightening its knowing manner, and given director Adam Rapp a lot to work with.

The fact that the film also features charming support performances from Marisa Tomei and Sam Rockwell (who also feature in the producer credits) should help its potential to break out and receive further festival exposure.

Raphael and Dominic manage to convince a well connected friend that they have written a film noir with great roles for them to play, but when they are given 10 days to deliver the script they head off to the rural New York home of Dominic’s sister Gigi (Tomei) to try and write something.

But their creative solitude is invaded, first by a drunken Gigi (who Raphael has always been in love with) and her friend Ava (Isabelle McNally), and then by Gigi’s estranged boyfriend Wayne (Rockwell) who shows up with his surfer-dude brother Devon (Brian Geraghty), who –to the annoyance of Dominic – has been offered a TV series by Jerry Bruckheimer based on his surfing skills alone.

Of course, the ‘script writing’ is just a device to bring this mis-matched bunch together, as genial house-party style high-jinks ensure, and while the film never reaches massive dramatic heights, its genial warmth and gentle comedy win through, with Tomei and Rockwell delivering terrific performances that ground the film and give the other cast room to play around.