TWO NIGHT STAND
US, 2014, 86 minutes, Colour.
Analeigh Tipton, Miles Teller, Jessica Szohr, Scott Mescudi.
Directed by Max Nicholls.
To Night Stand is a film for younger audiences, audiences in their teens and in their 20s, who can identify with the characters and situations. Older audiences will be observing and, perhaps, remembering.
This is a film with 21st sensibilities about sexual relationships, casual sex, and issues of whether to deepen relationships or not.
As with so many comedies, romantic comedies from the United States in these decades, the initial emphasis is to be frank with the touch of raunchy comedy, going through a process of deepening understanding of relationships, moving towards some kind of commitment which is desirable – which gives the films a final moral perspective.
Analeigh Tipton plays a recent graduate, experiencing a break up, and confined to an apartment where she idles away the time. Her roommate is urging her to do something positive. When she goes out with the roommate and her boyfriend and is refused admission by a bouncer to a club, she goes home, goes on to the Internet, enters into a chat with an unknown correspondent, using some, come-on language, and then finally decides that they will meet after he comes on screen and looks at her room.
He is played by Miles Teller, who has been in similar films, especially Project X, That Awkward Moment but he made a big impact as the student drummer in Whiplash.
The film then over moves to the morning after, with some comic touches about alarms and security, radios going on and her attempt to leave and writing a note, but unable to get out the door. When he wakes, he assumes that this is not her first stand and she is offended. They clash considerably – but, when she tries to leave, there is a severe New York snowstorm and it is impossible to open the door because of the snow.
The bulk of the film is how they handle the day together, she blocking the toilet and it overflowing because of her putting down an offensive page from a magazine, he not having a flusher having lent it to a friend. Eventually, they get out of the room, go over the roof, break a window to get into the neighbours to retrieve the flusher.
He proposes that they have further discussion, to start again, and he talk about how he would handle the sex situation and her response – there is quite some revelation for him and his cavalier male attitude.
They listen to music, they dance, and decide that they will have a second night stand.
She discovers a picture of himself and his girlfriend and he has to confess that she was due back but held up because of the storm. She is offended, seeing herself as the other woman, and leaving him.
He has found a letter from the girlfriend, wanting to break off, and the girlfriend on her return finds the visitor’s note in the wastepaper basket. There is discussion, and a break up.
In the meantime, the girl returns, discusses the situation with her roommate and boyfriend, and decides, after they suggest it, that she move out.
In the meantime, he tries to track the girl down, can’t get her surname from the Internet service, has the brainwave to say that she broke in to his neighbour’s house and the police come to arrest her, put her in jail for the night. Her roommate and boyfriend arrive to get her out. He arrives with flowers and a balloon cushion putting himself down – but she storms off but does admit that she will phone him when she laughs at this situation. As she sits with her friends, she reads the putdowns on the balloon and laughs – which means that she has to ring him, he is waiting, and they walk off into a happy ending, we hope.
