She’s In Portland (Marc Carlini, 2020): USA

Review by Jeremy Ellison. Viewed at SBIFF 2020.

She’s In Portland is a lighthearted road movie about two high school best friends reconnecting in their early thirties. Luke (François Arnaud) has been MIA for the past month or so, until Wes (Tommy Dewey) decides to stop leaving voicemails and actually find him. Once they reconnect, Wes discovers that Luke is experiencing a bit of an early midlife slump—his lovelife is at a halt and his day-to-day life brings him little excitement. Wes concludes that Luke’s mopiness is due to him missing a former girlfriend of his, who now lives in Portland (hence the title). Luke disagrees, but nonetheless, the two plan an impromptu road trip from Los Angeles to Portland, driving along the Pacific Coast Highway the entire way.

Throughout their road trip, Wes and Luke make frequent stops in tourist cities, which are used to progress the film’s plot. The most extensive of these sequences takes place in Isla Vista, California. Here, the guys relive their college days. (While a fun sequence for Santa Barbara natives or Santa Barbara college students, I’m not sure how well it would play out for everybody else; its presentation relies on the hope that you have some sort of history with the town.) They befriend and even become intimate with two young college women, who they then bring along for part of their adventure. During this weekend fling, Luke comes to the realization that the missing element in his life is in fact love, and he continues on the road trip with this new mindset.

The rest of the film consists mostly of interactions with random women at bars, sport montages, and pep talks—it’s very thin and eventually repetitive. The story is neither new nor interesting, and moreover, it has little thematic weight. But the worst aspect of this film is that it is, in every way, a cliché male fantasy played out. We are meant to sympathize with these men’s discontentment, yet they both live very desirable lives: Wes has a strong relationship with his wife and kids, and a comfortable salary that allows his family to live in a nice house. Luke isn’t as fortunate, but still works a visibly enjoyable job as a music video editor, which pays him well enough to live steadily in Los Angeles.

There is hardly drama to the story. The lowest point for either character happens when Wes loses some money and almost drunkenly cheats on his wife. But even in this scenario, which was initiated by Wes, the film makes him out to be a victim. Never does the film suggest that maybe the protagonists are privileged, misguided, or arrogant (all of which they both are). Furthermore, the film is hardly believable or authentic. Women are given almost no agency in the story, only existing to serve what the two men need in the moment—whether it be emotional support, anecdotal advice, or even physical pleasure (which, grossly, includes women over a decade younger than the men). Ironically, every woman in the film would work as a far more interesting protagonist than either Wes or Luke.

Even on a stylistic and technical level, the film falls flat. Besides a strong production value, it is consistently visually uninteresting. Its only cinematic nuances would be the slow-motion action shots it overuses—during golf swings, dance scenes, or just to introduce an environment. These moments make the film seem more like a tourist advertisement than an actual movie.

Luckily, She’s In Portland is never egregious. But it is, however, eye-roll inducing all throughout. It’s the result of a seemingly privileged and unscathed filmmaker carrying out a passion project just because he can. It’s the rare film that is both embarrassingly personal yet annoyingly generic. There are many far more interesting films being made today, especially ones that don’t exist simply to carry out masculine daydreams.