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Sam Stein needs a job. His therapist’s granddaughters need a babysitter. It’s a perfect little set-up, and one that first-time filmmaker Matthew Shear mines beautifully in his “Fantasy Life.” The former “Alienist” star and frequent fixture in Noah Baumbach films, including “While We’re Young” and “Mistress America,” was inspired by both his own life and the films he loves to make the feature, in which he also stars.
Per the film‘s official logline, it “follows an anxious law school dropout (Matthew Shear) who stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist’s three granddaughters and falls for the girls’ mother (Amanda Peet), an actress in a rocky marriage.” The film also boasts an enviable supporting cast, including Alessandro Nivola, Judd Hirsch, Bob Balaban, Andrea Martin, Zosia Mamet, and Holland Taylor.
Sam’s anxiety has slowly chipped away at his confidence in all areas of his life and, when we first meet him, he’s being laid off from his paralegal job, which sets off a series of panic attacks for this sweet if deeply lost New Yorker. Sam eventually secures a gig babysitting his therapist’s (Hirsch) three granddaughters, which in turn thrusts him into the rarefied (if a bit closed) world of their parents, including Alessandro Nivola as their would-be rockstar dad David and Peet as their former movie star mom Dianne.
The film premiered at last year’s SXSW, where it won both the Narrative Feature Audience Award, as well as the Special Jury Award for Peet’s performance in the film. The film marks Peet’s first lead role in almost a decade, and she’s magnificent in it. As she told IndieWire last March before the film’s premiere, she sparked instantly to Shear’s script.
“I felt like Matthew’s writing was special,” she said. “He’s really funny, and I could really relate to the part, since it’s about an aging actress whose career has fizzled out and who’s trying to keep one foot in the business and navigate having kids. … I just look for good writing. That’s all it is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a successful actress, a person down on their luck, a heroin addict, a Ivy League graduate, Ivy League professor, a doctor, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. If the writing’s good, that’s the thing that you’re looking for.”
Greenwich Entertainment will release “Fantasy Life” in theaters in New York City on Friday, March 27 and nationwide on Friday, April 3. Check out the film’s first trailer below.
English (US) ·