Human Affairs is a 2019 drama about a young, successful theatre couple in New York City who meet the surrogate mother of their child with unexpected results.
Genevieve (Julie Sokolowski) is a twenty-six-year-old French girl, who has found her way to the farmlands of Vermont, a history of lost love and a broken childhood home leaving her somewhat empty. Perhaps it’s ironic then that she is now a surrogate, carrying the baby of theater couple Sidney (Dominic Fumusa) and Lucinda (Kerry Condon), he a playwright and she an actress, the two unable to bear children of their own. They are ten years older, looking to find success in the industry but long wanting to raise a family. Very early in Genevieve’s pregnancy, she is invited to visit for a weekend with Sidney and Lucinda in New York, where we discover that there are secrets already between these people, and now these truths will bring greater consequences as choices must be made.
Director and co-writer Charlie Birns goes against the grain in setting up his debut effort, treating Human Affairs as a careful observation of human behavior from the eyes of a young woman neck deep in drama. It’s often told to us by narration and conversations delicately laid over separate images, the film purposefully embracing a dark dreamlike quality where stillness and silence back us into corners of contemplation (thanks to the work of cinematographer Sean Price Williams). That’s a big risk as it can wear thin, the narrative style both keeping us at a distance as we shuffle about the lives of these three people and up close to the complications that envelope them.
Birns seems to know that his story isn’t all that original – or very hard to see where it’s going – so uses his unconventional storytelling style to try and give it some edge. There is a decidedly inviting appeal to it, the oddity of how filtered it all is, where Genevieve’s steady commentary and inserts of stats and examinations lulls you into its bitter web, the heavy reality of poor choices and raw emotion making this undeniably identifiable. Here’s a film that recounts a significant week in the lives of these three people as the impending arrival of a fourth begins to change everything then dramatically lets only pictures unspool the aftermath.
This has plenty of possibilities for punch, and while it can feel awfully familiar leading up to it, manages to find some truly compelling hooks. However, it’s in Birns’ highly divisive ending, where the final throes of his experimental film makes its most impressive stand, something I won’t dare spoil, but will have profound effect on those who let everything that comes before land where it should while we fall further into how close it might feel to our own personal stories. The knee jerk reaction to this ending might be to simply dismiss it, which is disappointing, because it’s actually a wondrous display of time, with joy and sadness and pain and hope. It is them … and all of us. And it’s heartbreaking.
I applaud Birns attempt at something different, and while I can’t say I was always on board with his commitment to such an ethereal approach, I will admit that that longer I stayed with it, the more ‘right’ it felt for the larger story underneath until I was fully soaked in the breadth of it. The expanding bloom of a street light against a haunting blue-saurated night sky. A lone horse draped in fitted warmers as it paces along a wooden fence. A brief, longing glance across the breakfast table in hopes of a single word. These are all powerful images that might seem inconsequential in the moment-to-moment lives of these characters but have much to say in the scope of what Birns is trying to tackle. It’s a flawed and beautiful journey.