Obvious Child

A comedy set in New York. Donna performs. She does stand-up at a small club and the material is entirely her own life; her relationship, her family, her body. One night her boyfriend leaves her. In the same week she is told the bookshop she works at is closing. In a bad stretch she meets a man. Max is calm, polite and not from her world; they spend a night together. Then Donna learns she is pregnant. She decides quickly: she will not have the child. The film does not build the decision as a crisis; the real matter is making the appointment, finding the money, telling her mother, and whether to tell Max. What the narrative is interested in is not the choice but honesty: Donna tells everything on stage and struggles to speak in her actual life, and the film is built on that contradiction. The humour is painful and direct; the stage sections are the best part and what she says there keeps talking to what happens inside the story. Jenny Slate plays Donna and the part was taken as her arrival in film. Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann, Richard Kind and Polly Draper are in the cast. Gillian Robespierre wrote and directed; the film was expanded from her own short. Who it is for: anyone who likes American independent comedy and the world of stand-up. Who it is not for: anyone the subject will trouble; the film treats abortion not as a debate but as an event.