Critics reviews

With its black-and-white photography dropping us into a cinematic space out-of-step with time, Blue Jay is a poignant chamber play between fortysomethings who never quite got over their teen romance. The strength of the movie lies with Paulson and Duplass' considerable chemistry... Discovering what went wrong is, like nostalgia itself, exquisitely painful and pleasurable in equal measure.

This is a first feature for Lehmann, a cinematographer who also shot the film in black-and-white, pausing now and then for slow exterior night shots of this pretty but depressed town. The strategy's a little cliché, but the serenity is welcome, counterpointing the wild swings between euphoria, finger-pointing, gentle nostalgia, and empathy as Jim and Amanda fumble their way to the critical point of pain that sealed their fates all those years ago.

Duplass and Paulson counteract the deliberately banal dialogue (Duplass also wrote the screenplay) with superbly anxious body language; Jim and Amanda's "casual," "amiable" chitchat is so painfully forced that it's a wonder nothing ruptures. These two people clearly have a troubled history, and it takes Blue Jay only a few minutes to generate intense curiosity about what it is.

Lehmann shot Blue Jay in a gorgeous black-and-white that looks like silver gelatin prints (a photographic process that captures boundless gradations of gray), which complements the story's heartfelt simplicity. Even after twenty years apart, Amanda and Jim can ask each other the questions no one else would dare to, and understand the answers that go beyond words.

Duplass wrote the screenplay, and Blue Jay has the poignant, cleansing wistfulness of the films he's written and directed with his brother, Jay. Regret hangs like a pall over the Duplass siblings' oeuvre, stunting their characters, who're usually jumpstarted by a catharsis.