‘Language Lessons’: Natalie Morales Directorial Debut Is Hampered By Its Zoom Meeting Dynamics [SXSW Review]

In the age of quarantine and pandemics, connection is desperately needed, loneliness is its own epidemic, and mental health and tragedy issues are all-too-relevant, sad byproducts of the COVID-19 era. Now, while it’s arguably (or charitably) unclear if anyone actually wants to actually see any stories set during quarantine—by all accounts, most quarantine-set movies and TV like “Locked Down” and “Coastal Elites” were terrible— all of these aforementioned ideas of isolation, connection, confinement and more, at the center of Natalie Morales’ directorial debut, “Language Lessons.”

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It’s a noble effort, using the ideas of language to deepen and enrich the themes of connecting with one another in a meaningful way, and the misunderstandings that come with an unfamiliar language, passive-aggressiveness, authentic, honest, communication, coded language, and more. But the fact of the matter is, “Language Lessons,” has the aesthetics of a Zoom meeting and therefore is dry, hampered by its inherent cinematic limitations and restrictions.

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“Language Lessons” takes the ideas of distance, Zoom, quarantine, etc., and grafts them onto the idea of unlikely friendships and platonic love. The film stars Mark Duplass as Adam, a gay man who married into wealth, and his off-screen husband has bought him weekly Spanish language lessons that go on for several months. Cariño (Natalie Morales), is the Spanish-language teacher that surprises Adam on a Zoom call one day, asking him if he’s ready to start the first lesson that Adam has no idea about.

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But tragedy strikes early on in their lessons in Adam’s personal life. His husband suddenly passes away, and Cariño (which means affection and caring in Spanish and is a little too on the nose), is left in the awkward situation of trying to either continue the lessons, give him time to grieve and pause the teaching for a few months, or help the totally blindsided and dismayed Adam. Needing a life-life and stuck in quarantine, Adam decides to continue the Spanish-language lessons. However, they quickly transform into an emotional support therapy session that Cariño is ill-equipped to handle. Still, they persist, and through it all, forge a deep emotional bond together over Zoom.

But that’s really the entire movie. Cariño has some of her own trust and deception issues from her locale in the Dominican Republic. Some deeper secrets are unveiled, but Adam’s ideas of privilege also misunderstand some of her circumstances and make some unfortunate assumptions from a white savior perspective.

Cinematically, the film, at best, can place them in different backgrounds to switch things up, by the pool, outdoors, indoors, in the backyard, in the rec room, but let’s face it, this is 91 minutes of Mark Duplass face talking to Natalie Morales’ and the two of them bonding over a shared traumatic experience, one person largely self-centered and the other compassionate enough to stick around and be a make-shift therapist for a white stranger (though there’s a financial desperation aspect to it all too).

Clearly written and conceived during the height of the pandemic—that creative impulse urge that created hasty films like “Locked Down”— “Language Lessons” may have played OK in September, but in March 2021, a year later, when people want content that’s the exact opposite of the reminder of COVID, pandemics, and isolation, it’ll be interesting to see who this film connects with (and with all the generosity I can muster, this probably should have been a short film).

I like Morales, I like producers Jay and Mark Duplass, and I like they are trying to use their caché to help get Morales’ directorial debut made and out into the world. That’s honorable and using their privilege in the right and intended way to lift up others. Unfortunately, Zoom movies do not really benefit anyone, Morales or otherwise (but hopefully this means, she gets another opportunity to do it for “real” out in the world). Duplass’ Spanish is good (a nice plus), and the movie’s intentions are in the right place; it’s warm, warm-hearted, and even mildly bittersweet, but in short, no more Zoom movies, please, and thanks. [C+]

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