Jane Weinstock’s engaging Three Birthdays provides us with a glance at how the heart and the mind do not always run parallel and how humans are filled with unwanted contradictions no matter how hard we try.
In 1970, at the height of the sexual revolution, an idealistic academic couple, Rob (Josh Radnor) and Kate (Annie Parisse), and their 17-year-old daughter, Bobbie (Nuala Cleary), wrestle with revolutionary ideas about sex, race, and class.
Bobbie is just entering the sexual awakening stage of her life, and after succeeding in getting past that big step in losing her virginity, she sees something she wishes she didn’t. That loud sex neighbour at the motel was, in fact, her mother. Devastated, she bemoans that the sexual revolution wasn’t for people like her parents, who are over 40; it is for people of her generation. Empowered by her Professor parents, she wants to take to the streets and do the right thing with her activism, but that the best of intentions are never always the wisest. Nuala Cleary is terrific as the conflicted Bobbie. You feel for her as she tries to grapple with what her parents are doing. She juggles the turmoil of a teenager experiencing everything all at once very well and terrifically brings sadness to her character.
Equally, Radnor and Parisse use their experience to keep a film that, at first glance, feels like a light affair and has more of a sad tone tinged throughout it. Three Birthdays is a tale of misguidance and contradictions and excels when we see how complex relationships in all forms can be, even when the people involved mean the others, not an ounce of harm. Sometimes, difficult decisions will lead to some form of devastation, even if it’s quiet. Kate and Rob are not easy characters to pull off while still feeling sympathetic towards them, yet Radnor and especially Parisse pull it off with the ease you would expect from actors with their talent.
While characters like Bobby and Kate are written superbly well by Weinstock, Rob feels like the weakest link narratively wise. A man who is just a ball of internal frustration but is too meek to fully allow his emotions to come to the fore. We see him cut a mopey figure for much of his and Kate’s birthdays. Despite several reasons for caring for him, we eventually offered little sympathy towards him. He feels underbaked as a character, as when confronted with things, he shrinks or lies and even gives a weak version of” I didn’t want to upset you by disagreeing with your idea” to Kate.
In comparison, Bobbie and Kate are given impetus in their arcs; Bobbie is trying to find herself sexually and taking the liberal beliefs she has been brought up to fight the good fight in protesting. She soon learns that not everything works out exactly as she imagines. Be it with her parents’ marriage, her goals for college, or the active use of her freedom of speech at protests. With Kate, she finds that her own form of liberation and sexuality comes at a price, not with her husband, but with how a nearly adult child would feel towards such betrayal of the typical familial bond she was raised in. These arcs are incredibly interesting, and when we focus on them, we are actively engaged with where the story will go for the two women, but with Rob, it just feels that other than him not speaking up for his own feelings because he wanted to keep his wife happy and eventually falling foul of that misguided nature (he black power salutes a group of kids who laugh at him). You just sense there could have been more layered in to allow all three characters to shine.
After all, all of our characters are misguided in their own ways, with Bobby being misguided by the open but very secure life her parents have provided her thus far. Kate is misguided in how she follows what she teaches with femininity but can’t quite grapple with or even comprehend how her other half might feel about the open relationship experiment, and with Rob, he is just consumed by his inaction in his career and his private life. He seems to think that if he just copies his wife, he will be fine, even if he is far from it.
Three Birthdays allows for a complex narrative to play out in an interesting fashion. While it tries to tie itself up into a tidy bow in the third act, it gives itself that final scene, where our three characters are changed by their experiences but, even years later, have not necessarily grown from them. It’s an interesting and solid film that just doesn’t dig deep enough to make it a great one. Just having that one short heart-to-heart moment with Kate and Rob towards the end of the film Three Birthdays robs itself of really connecting with audiences on a wider level as a social commentary piece.
★★★
Three Birthdays is released in select Theaters 1/24, and Digitally 2/18.
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