The Baltimorons

Christmas Eve. Cliff is newly sober and is going to dinner with his fiancée's family. There is an accident and he breaks a tooth. The only person on duty at the emergency dental clinic is Didi. She is his mother's age. The treatment ends but Cliff cannot leave. The two get in a car and the night goes by driving around Baltimore. A bar, a bowling alley, a relative's house. Cliff does improv comedy and has not been off drink for long. Didi tells nobody about her own life. Jay Duplass directs; he wrote the screenplay with Michael Strassner. Michael Strassner plays Cliff and Liz Larsen plays Didi; Olivia Luccardi is in the cast. It is an American production. The film screened at the SXSW festival on 8 March 2025 and won the audience award. IFC Films opened it in New York on 5 September and expanded it nationwide a week later. It made the National Board of Review's list of the year's ten best independent productions and was nominated for the Cassavetes award at the Independent Spirit Awards. The matter it treats is sobriety; the film gives it not through a scene of struggle but through an unease that lasts all night. The narrative does not set the age difference between the two as a problem and does not settle into the romantic shape. It was shot in Baltimore and the city appears in its untouristed places. Its limit is scale; the narrative is small, there is little event, and it amounts to a conversation between two people. Who it is for: viewers who like American independent comedy and films set over one night. Who it is not for: there is no event, the pace low, and the ending quiet.