July Talk’s Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay Goldstein Explore Love, Loss, and Second Chances in New Romantic Comedy Middle Life
Cast and crew of Middle Life on the red carpet. Photo courtesy of the Calgary International Film Festival.
Directed, written, and edited by Pavan Moondi and starring July Talk members Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay Goldstein, Middle Life follows Andie (played by Goldstein), a wedding planner and new mother who attempts to plan every aspect of her life perfectly. Despite her best efforts, unhappiness seeps into her life and her marriage to her husband, Chris (played by Luke Lalonde, also of the band Born Ruffians). One night, she comes across a roadside car accident and saves a plumber named Ryan (played by Dreimanis), over the next year, they cross paths again and again, leading to an unexpected friendship that ultimately gives Andie a newfound perspective on life. With stunning chemistry between Dreimanis and Goldstein, a mesmerizing Bossa nova score from Ben Fox, and a warm, emotional undertone throughout the film, Middle Life feels like a return to the beloved rom-com classics of the ’90s bringing When Harry Met Sally... or You've Got Mail into the 2020s.
After the film’s world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival this September, REVERIE chatted with Dreimanis and Goldstein about their work on the film.
“When something kind of scares us, it makes us want to do it, and the idea of doing a rom-com seemed so out of left field, but it felt like we could learn a lot by working like a fish out of water,” says Dreimanis. “I think as film school kids and people coming up in the Toronto art scene, you are usually trying to make movies that are super subversive and trying to make it be super unique and an elevator pitch that is never heard of before. I think the idea of creating something that relied on a referential genre and was kind of predictable, relying on these notes that worked time and time again, felt challenging.”
“It’s just this little cute, delightful, funny rom-com moment, and its only aim is to make people feel good, and I’m grateful for Pavan for doing that work,” adds Goldstein.
Leah Fay Goldstein and Peter Dreimanis. Photo courtesy of the Calgary International Film Festival.
Although Moondi wrote the film, Dreimanis and Goldstein provided him with notes and collaborated on the script. The pair wanted Middle Life to convey a more realistic view of what it is like to be a parent and the way a new parent thinks. “Pavan doesn’t have kids currently, so there were certain things we were trying to insert, like, there is no way Andie wouldn’t be thinking about her baby in the back of her mind in this scene, or little things that I think a lot of people probably wouldn’t notice, like when she is getting ready to go out, but she’s also defrosting some breast milk so her partner can feed the baby and put the baby to bed,” says Goldstein. “We wanted to illustrate that you can be away from your baby for a weekend, but your body, mind, and heart are still very much with them.”
“When you’re a parent and we have both been kind of going through this as of late, everything in your life has to do with your kid, and that’s the only thing that matters to you in a lot of ways,” adds Dreimanis. “A lot of these movies, it seems like the kid is put in to make the audience like the character more, or seem more complicated. Then the whole movie it's like ‘Where’s the kid? Who is taking care of the kid right now?’” he adds.
Moondi had Dreimanis and Goldstein watch several classic rom-coms to prepare for their roles, including When Harry Met Sally…, Crossing Delancey, and Stepmom, among others. Goldstein also watched Babes and Tully to prepare for the role of Andie. “I just watched them to see what’s already out there in terms of people making comedic films about motherhood and parenting,” she says. “Getting to play someone who is young and a new mother, but that’s not the whole point of her character, is just exciting to me.” After watching many Hollywood films featuring new mothers, Goldstein noticed a common trend among them. She thought Moondi did a great job of making Andie a much more fleshed-out character. “It felt like a lot of them were a bit one-dimensional, either with just experiencing like postpartum or being used as a kind of trope character. I find Pavan is really good at writing characters who are going through a multifaceted human experience. Andie fell into that, too.”
Meanwhile, Dreimanis found inspiration from Broadcast News and The Bear. “I was really taken away by Albert Brooks’ performance in Broadcast News, where he is this sort of emotional heart-on-his-sleeve guy, especially that scene where he is drunk,” he says. “Ebon Moss-Bachrach took on that sort of blue-collar character in The Bear. I grew up with a lot of folks in blue-collar fields, like the trades and stuff like that. I have a ton of respect for people who do that for a living. I wanted that to be believable – I pictured Ebon here and there in my performance.”
Earlier this year, Dreimanis made his feature film debut in Sinners, where he played a frighteningly eerie and mysteriously brooding folk-singing vampire named Bert. He found that Bert was more in his wheelhouse. “Being a creepy guy, I can do that all day,” he laughs. “My instincts generally lend themselves to more brooding, dark, suspenseful storylines, even in music and the characters that come to my mind in songs. It was a huge shift to have to go into this place, where I was speaking very loudly, going very big, trying to be convincing to tell Andie to go big and have an epic adventure. It went against my every instinct.” Despite being a bit out of his comfort zone, Dreimanis was up for the challenge and had a blast playing Ryan, mainly because of the way Ryan sees the world. “It felt fun to force myself into creating a character like that… He is obviously such a hopeful, positive optimist, and in today’s world, it was fun to play someone who is maybe naively excited about the world. Even though he is running away from demons, it kind of felt like he just woke up every day happy to be alive.”
On the other hand, Goldstein was the star of Moondi’s Diamond Tongues, where she played Edith, an actress who dreams of being a movie star. She tells me that this film relied more on improvisation, especially depending on who she was doing a scene with. “Pavan was like ‘This is the point of the scene as long as you hit this mark, this mark, and this mark let’s see what happens,’ and acting in a scene with someone like Nick Flanagan, who is a very hilarious Toronto comedian, Pavan was like ‘This is how Nick will thrive and Leah will be able to play off of him.’” She also had a small role in Sundowners, where she acted alongside Lalonde, which also relied heavily on improvisation. “Pavan just wanted us to have a weird, awkward conversation and Luke and I are quite good at that as people, so he just wanted to capture that [on screen.]”
Middle Life Q&A. Photo courtesy of the Calgary International Film Festival.
Middle Life took a different turn, as there was almost no room for improvisation. “Sticking to the script was pretty important to Pavan, so that felt really new,” continues Goldstein. “Also trying to figure out how to give deliveries that are accurate for a character where there wasn’t really room to make it your own, and often it was about trying to give slightly different performances of the same scene and line. Like this time, you’re being slightly more aggressive, or this time slightly more defeated. Pavan always at the back of his mind had ‘Will people be rooting for Andie? Will people be rooting for Chris? Will people be rooting for Ryan?’ It was just trying to find this balance where no one is really a good guy, and no one is really a bad guy.”
Giving slightly different performances or line readings for the same scene was a weird experience for Dreimanis. “In music, you kind of figure out the best version of whatever you are doing, and you try to do the best version of that best version, but with film, because so much of it is created in the editing room it felt kind of crazy to have to imagine and act out every which way a certain scene could go,” he comments.
Middle Life celebrated its world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival this September. “It was great to watch it with a room full of people who laugh at the things you hope they would laugh at and laugh at things you didn’t know people would laugh at and just be able to see it function,” says Goldstein. “I felt really pleased with how it unfolded and how it delighted people, which is like the whole point of a rom-com.”
“Watching it with an audience and hearing their reactions, and feeling the lightness in the room, I'll never forget it,” said Dreimanis.
Dreimanis and Goldstein are incredibly proud and happy with the way Middle Life turned out. They hope the film brings people joy and inspires people to try something new, no matter how scary it might be. “I feel like it is pretty brave to try and incite joy in this moment, and that’s kind of what makes it revolutionary,” says Goldstein.
“I think we often get stuck in thinking who we think we are, and the narratives we tell ourselves about the roles we play in society, and how those things have to be constant and stagnant,” reflects Dreimanis. “I think that Middle Life is cool in that it sort of encourages you to look at your life and that at any point, you can start again and try something new, or if something's not working, change it.”