Liberal Arts

A thirty-five year old in a job going nowhere in New York returns to his university for a retiring professor's ceremony. There he meets a nineteen year old student. Rather than romanticising the relationship, the film makes the age difference the point; the man has to accept that going back is not a solution, and the narrative gives him no easy exit. The conversations about books are its best material. Josh Radnor wrote, directed and starred. Elizabeth Olsen and Richard Jenkins are in the cast. It was shot on a real Ohio campus. Before watching: the film eventually criticises its character's nostalgia, but shares it for a long while first. You may find that tiring.