SXSW 2023 Review:
"Molli and Max in the Future"
![]() Release Date: Feb. 9, 2024
Rating: Not Rated Running Time: 93 minutes What starts as Before Sunrise in space quickly becomes an interdimensional variation on When Harry Met Sally … in Molli and Max in the Future, writer/director Michael Lukk Litwak’s hopelessly romantic “will they or won’t they?” sci-fi anti-romcom. Zosia Mamet’s Molli and Aristotle Athari’s Max meet cute in outer space—or as cute as you can when you collide into each other in outer space—and then spend more than a decade engaged in an on-again, off-again platonic relationship. You don’t need to be a sex-hungry demigod from another galaxy to recognize Molli and Max are made for each other despite seemingly being mismatched from the get-go. Litwak imbues Molli and Max’s early interactions with enough flirty dialogue to make it impossible for them to resist each other. But resist they do. And even when they go their own ways—Molli to join a cult and learn magic, Max to become a mech fighter—they somehow keep bumping into each other and beginning the process of reconnecting and refusing to couple up. This goes on for 12 years after Litwak decides enough is enough, that it is time for them to either get together or go their separate ways. When Molli and Max first meet, Mamet and Athari hit it off so that you assume they will spend the next 90 minutes making out on the backseat of Molli’s space car. “I don’t think there is a future [between us] and I don’t see the point of having sex if there is no future,” Max tells Molli after she asks if they are going to sleep together. But Molli and Max do have a future together, and it is set to a frisky jazz score by Alex Winkler that remains us at all times we are watching a film heavily influenced by one of the romcoms of the past 40 years. The rest of the film is fueled by the undeniable sexual tension that Mamet and Athari create between Molli and Max as they develop their platonic relationship while contending with their professional and romantic ups and downs. With Molli and Max in the Future, Litwak doesn’t so much ask whether men and women can be friends—even if one of them happens to be half-human, half-fish (think Kevin Costner in Waterworld)—but what does it take for two people to recognize they belong together. And Litwak does so by telling Molli and Max in the Future with all the style and verve of a graphic novel. He achieves this by filming his actors against a green screen with digital backdrops that quickly whisk Molli and Max from one new world or dimension to another. As with the George Lucas Star Wars prequels, you are always aware you are watching actors perform against a green screen. But it never feels distracting or disorienting because the visual effects not just display a high level of artistry and creativity but push forward Molli and Max’s relationship in cool and inventive directions. Litwak digs deep into his imagination to chronicle Molli’s indoctrination into a sex cult led by a tentacled demigod and depict Max’s rise to fame and fortune as a Super Mecha Fighter (think Robot Jox). (One side plot, involving a demon from the so-called Trash Demon, offers a witty if somewhat on-the-nose commentary the political turmoil our country has experienced since 2016.) In fact, Molli and Max in the Future’s end credits offer a glimpse at how Litwak worked on set with his cast and crew. Even with such technology at his disposal, Litwak never lets the visual effects overwhelm a slyly funny but often tender tale about love and longing. It could be as much a calling card for Litwak as the SXSW 2010 favorite Monsters was for director Gareth Edwards. Robert Sims Posted: March 23, 2023. Web sites: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2023/films/2081870 https://geni.us/MolliandMax |
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