You can imagine what kind of character the eponymous Greenberg (Ben Stiller) might have been in a less intelligent film. He’d be a caricature of a misfiit, with a career he loathed or a dead-end job in retail with a schmucky uniform. But what makes Greenberg, from writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale), such an interesting and audacious character study is that Greenberg really does nothing. He doesn’t work or drive and has little in the way of meaningful relationships. He’s embraced that uniquely LA experience of being adrift, content to while away the hours drafting sarcastic letters of complaint.

In a way Greenberg the film is a bit like that. The brilliance of it is that it gives the impression of not trying very hard at all to be a film, almost as if it were indifferent to us as an audience. We’re uncertain whether to like or dislike Greenberg because the movie doesn’t seem to tell us to like or dislike him either way. But the fact Greenberg doesn’t dictate its response of you is what makes it so charming and effective.

First we meet Florence Marr (Greta Garwig), a 25-year-old with the demeanour and daggy wardrobe of someone much younger. She works as a personal assistant for Phillip Greenberg (Chris Messina) and his family in their Hollywood Hills home. The family take a vacation overseas and leave Phillip’s brother Roger (Stiller) – who we come to know simply as ‘Greenberg’ and is fresh out of mental hospital – to house-sit.

Greenberg is, on one level at least, the story of Florence and Greenberg’s unconventional and awkward relationship: stilted communication, strange loveless sex and the occasionally rare moment of genuine intimacy. Greenberg is intelligent, self-absorbed and a time-bomb in social situations, with a tendency to lash out unexpectedly. But Greta is forgiving to a fault, and evidently sees something in Greenberg no-one else (including perhaps the audience) can see.

It’s the kind of role that we rarely see Stiller step into these days. Apart from one fairly hilarious stand-out instance of his goofball antics – Greenberg bidding a hasty escape from a potential road rage confrontation – it’s a very controlled, introspective and nuanced performance. The fact that it’s Stiller is arguably what makes it work so well: one gets the feeling of Alex the Lion pacing his cage somewhere inside that head.

There’s a striking verisimilitude to the film too. Baumbach evokes the sunny brand of West Coast melancholy perfectly – at times it almost has the acidity of Woody Allen’s idea of LA – and the dialogue has the same meandering, tangential quality that conversations have in real life when no-one is really listening to anyone but themselves. Greenberg won’t get anyone in stitches, but again its power is in being frequently funny without appearing to try to be funny at all.

As a film about two misfits, Greenberg is a bit of a misfit itself: bright, mysterious and not that interested in making friends. Many won’t have the patience for it, but there’ll be plenty – the people who know that the misfit’s often the most interesting one – who’ll get along with it just fine.


Greenberg opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday, July 22.
You can view the Greenberg movie trailer here on TheVine.