New York is a city constantly in survival mode — it’s a harried concrete haven for people who need a measure of desperation (financial or otherwise) just to get out of bed in the morning. There are so many things to hate about this place, but you have to love it because leaving is the only option less viable than sticking around. And to do that, you have to love the fact that everyone around you is in the same boat (which is why so many of us have adopted complaining as a love language unto its own). Solitude is hard to come by in the center of the world, but it can be all too easy to feel like you’re alone. The trick is to appreciate that you’re not.
The frayed and frequently despicable hero of Simon Hacker’s (frayed but frequently likable) “Notice to Quit” will be more alone by the end of this low-budget comedy than he is at the start, as the movie’s frantic story is set on the long summer day before his Latina ex-wife (Isabel Arraiza) and their preteen daughter Anna (Kasey Bella Suarez) are due to relocate to Orlando. And yet, there’s an outside chance that Andy will feel a bit more connected to the people around him — wherever they might be — by the time the sun finally dips out of sight below the western lip of Manhattan. That is, if he doesn’t get shot in the head like Howard Ratner at some point before then.
Played by Michael Zegen (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” actor uncompromising in his character’s ragged self-interest), Andy is very much at the height of his “Uncut Gems” era. Lucky for him, Hacker is more soft-hearted than the directors he once crewed for on the set of “Good Time,” and “Notice to Quit” is a much gentler ride than anything either of the Safdies would ever think to shoot. Stressful as it is from start to finish, this is very much a nice movie at heart. Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” might land with a touch of irony when Hacker drops it over the film’s opening minutes (by which point Andy is already in a world of shit), but the song’s shambling groove sets the tone for the upbeat adventure that follows; the rest of the soundtrack is borrowed from Bleachers.
Andy is a very bad real estate agent, but that’s only because he’s bad at everything he does. Just like the acting career he abandoned after getting cast in a ubiquitous toothpaste campaign, Andy is only in the rental business for the money, which is especially unfortunate because he isn’t making any. He works for the worst firm in the city, and — despite whatever talents he might have as a performer — clients can see right through his cheap suit and sweaty desperation.
In lieu of closing any listings, Andy has started stealing appliances from the empty apartments he fails to rent, and selling them to a low-level criminal played by “The Climb” breakout Michael Angelo Covino (acing the funniest and most Kevin Corrigan-coded role in a knowing smirk of a movie that isn’t much interested in actual laughs). Alas, Andy owes that guy almost as much money as he owes the landlord threatening to kick him out of his apartment, and he only has 24 hours to pay both of them back. The last thing he needs is a surprise visit from his kid daughter, who’s snuck away from her babysitter in order to spend one last day in the city with her deadbeat dad.
Andy’s first instinct is to heave Anna over his head and fireman’s-lift her onto the streets, but the kid is wise beyond her years, and soon proves to be less of a nuisance than she is a useful ally in helping her dad make the most of his situation. Things go from slightly puckish to full-blown “Paper Moon” in a hurry, as Anna finds herself causing useful distractions at Andy’s office, faking a scene at a diner to score a free veggie burger, and even doing some Spanish-to-English translation for her dad when he’s thrown into the back of a van by some of the people he needs to pay. It’s the kind of dynamic that could be insufferably precocious in a film so thin that Giosuè Greco’s squelchy and excellent Philip Glass-inspired score often threatens to become its most developed character (aside from New York City itself, of course!), but Suarez plays the reality of each scene with the naturalness of a serious talent in the making.
It helps that Hacker doesn’t go in for unnecessary cuteness, but “Notice to Quit” can struggle to fill the gap left behind by the absence of cheap sentiment and broad comedy gags. That admirable commitment to the truth or something like it is let down by its inability to make that truth sing, and it’s telling that the movie’s most engaging scene — in which Covino’s gang cases a ritzy uptown apartment in the middle of an open house — is also its most far-fetched.
While Zegen is queasily watchable at all times, his dedication to Andy’s single-minded need for survival is somewhat wasted on a film whose sweltering 35mm images are a lot more textured than any of its writing (a valuable reminder that shooting on film is worth any sacrifice for most projects, as losing a few production days on a real movie is better than getting everything you need out of a piece of digital content). Robert Klein’s brief performance as Andy’s father goes a long way toward fleshing the character out. Still, we never get a fuller sense of who he is underneath the rumpled brown suit he wears like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The sweetness he inevitably shows to his daughter by the end can’t help but seem forced when compared to the shittiness he shows her along the way.
But “Notice to Quit” is redeemed by the simple fact of its nature: This isn’t a film that lives in the lows and highs of its defining moments so much as it’s a film that’s sustained by the strength it takes to put one foot in front of the other, and by the rush of rushing through New York City in lockstep with someone you care about. “You’re a good father when you don’t try to be,” Anna tells her dad, and that observation rings true in a story about the magical friction created by a place where people never stop moving. If Hacker’s debut contains enough sun-dappled shots of people scrambling across Manhattan crosswalks to fill 10 metropolitan rom-coms, that’s only because the energy those shots exude is the real subject of a movie so motivated by the rush of needing to be somewhere, and by the sticky late summer warmth of realizing that you’ll always have somewhere to go.
Grade: B-
“Notice to Quit” will be released in theaters on Friday, September 27.
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