Egg is a 2019 comedy about friends who meet for an afternoon of food wine and conversation about women, sex, family and pregnancy.
Single-setting talk-a-lots like Marianna Palka‘s latest comedy Egg, are a rare breed but pop up every so often, sort of challenging us to put on a different hat and consider movies in an unconventional way. Admittedly, most of these typically Indie gems are about chaos that spin from what starts as simple conflict, dealt with not by heavy action or grotesque violence (at least physical), but rather sharp dialogue. For the most part, that’s exactly what happens here, the small venture an exercise in Mars versus Venus and other delicate offshoots that bristle to life mostly because of the people doing the talking.
In New York, we meet young couple Tina (Alysia Reiner) and Wayne (Gbenga Akinnagbe), she an artist and the two enjoying a comfortable living in a large, cozy studio with big windows and lots of sunlight. They are to have a baby, but not through Tina, the couple using a surrogate, a bubbly little blonde named Kiki (Anna Camp). Visiting the couple for the afternoon are Karen (Christina Hendricks), an old friend of Tina’s, and her husband Don (David Alan Basche), a man of money, who isn’t all that into social get-togethers. Karen is also pregnant, and so naturally, the focus shifts to parenthood with some varying opinions causing a stir, made more complicated when Kiki arrives, the girl a bundle of issues herself.
Straight away, this is a low budget affair, the whole thing purposefully shot like a filmed stage play, layered in playfully quirky music and all kinds of asides that keep it well designed as a light breezy comedy. It’s a welcome space for these couples to explore their thoughts, and Palka, working from a script by Risa Mickenberg, manages to keep balance of the whimsy and the drama, never letting it slip too far into either side, despite the weighty conversations.
It’s a debate on how best to be pregnant and how best to go from there, the women starkly opposite on methods and practices, Karen happily traditional on the matter while Tina is aggressively visionary. As expected, this sort of pits the pair in heated talks of who is right and who is wrong, with Karen joyful and optimistic while Tina seems somewhat clinical about the ordeal. With the men involved and Kiki tossing in her offbeat observations, there’s plenty of fuel to stoke the fires sparking between them.
There’s a certain giddiness to it all and these characters aren’t all that hard to decipher, with simple secrets and revelations in the third act easy to see coming. To that end, the film isn’t quite sure of itself in places, and tends to lean hard into some obvious targets, especially with Kiki, not to mention the unwinnable nature of the argument itself. The cast is very game though with some energetic turns from the lot, with the women of course doing most of the heavy lifting. It’s most especially good to see Hendricks given a more thorough role than she’s had in a long time, she, as usual, making everything she says fun to watch.
Egg is not nearly as brave as Palka’s previous Bitch, about a woman who basically devolves into a dog. She’s a fearless filmmaker and while this movie might not give her the runway space to be so as Bitch did, there’s no lacking the momentum. Not for everyone, as will be no surprise, Egg is nonetheless another worthy experiment that has just enough rewards to make it worth a look.