Review: MISS YOU, LOVE YOU

 by Rob DiCristino

Light up the summer blockbuster season with a two-handed chamber drama!

Among 2024’s many underdiscussed gems was Hard Truths, the brutal and uncompromising character study from English auteur Mike Leigh and one of his most celebrated collaborators, Marianne Jean-Baptiste. In what should have been an awards-sweeping performance, Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a surly and bitter wretch of a woman whose anger masks a deep sadness that only love — specifically, the love of her sister (Michele Austin as Chantelle) — can overcome. Leigh’s intimate presentation makes Hard Truths a compelling watch, but it’s the universality of Pansy’s journey that really makes it memorable: At one point or another, we’ve all hidden wounds behind resentment and rage. We’ve all withheld truths from those with the power to make us pay for them. We’ve all succumbed to doubt and insecurity. But the more unbearable Pansy’s behavior gets — and if you haven’t seen Hard Truths, then you haven’t seen just how repugnant a human being can be — the more we see the desperation and misery behind all of her fury.

Written and directed by Jim Rash — whom I got to know as the flamboyant Dean Pelton on Community before he won an Oscar for co-writing Alexander Payne’s The Descendents — the new HBO film Miss You, Love You plays in a similar realm. Just days after the unexpected death of her beloved husband, Henry, the hardheaded and irascible Diane (Allison Janney) hears a knock on the door: It’s Jamie (Andrew Rannells), who says he’s an assistant to her son, Tyler, and that he’s here to help her with Henry’s funeral arrangements while Tyler researches a new novel in some faraway land. He’s stuck there for safety reasons — or at least, that’s what Tyler would have Diane believe — and Jamie is here to guide Diane through this difficult time in his stead. Diane isn’t thrilled to welcome this substitute son, however, and she has absolutely no compunction about letting him know it. But as the preparations progress, both Diane and Jamie will confront a few shared animosities that — you’ll never believe this— reveal them to be far more alike than they initially thought.

An elegantly-staged two-hander set in an arid New Mexican desert community, Miss You, Love You is driven by the stifling weight of absence: Both Henry and Tyler are frequently spoken of but never seen in person — Henry appears in photos and voicemails, while Tyler exists only as a series of urgent chirps on Jamie’s phone — leaving Diane and Jamie to dump all kinds of displaced resentment onto each other, instead. Diane’s angry at Henry for dying, for example, for leaving her stranded in an adobe rancher when she’d rather be in a Manhattan penthouse. She’s angry at Tyler for never calling her, for using old family feuds as an excuse to keep her at a distance. And Jamie? Well, he’s just here to do his job, right? Or is he an overeager people-pleaser who hopes that handling Diane will help Tyler see Jamie the way he wants to be seen — he can’t let go of an unrealized romance between them — and force Tyler to admit that he was wrong to let him go? These recriminations quickly pile up, bonding Diane and Jamie in a mutual discontent that they can no longer ignore.

Rash’s screenplay is the kind of three-course meal that actors like West Wing alum Allison Janney and Broadway favorite Andrew Rannells chow down on with ease, but it’s the unlikely physical chemistry between them that saves Miss You, Love You from its writing whenever the sheer tonnage of dialogue — each actor has a handful of wordy, impassioned outbursts that seem to go on for ages — starts to feel too studied and exact to have come from real live human beings. It’s especially effective given the confines of the setting: Janney’s trademark imperiousness and statuesque height should reduce the more mild-mannered Rannells to a puddle on the kitchen floor, but watching Jamie hold close-ups, find his footing, and push back with hooks and jabs of his own is one of the film’s great joys. For as clumsy and overwrought as things become in the third act — Rash eventually loses patience with dramatic conceits and starts shouting his characters’ emotional subtext from the rooftops — Janney and Rannells sell the histrionics like pros.

At its best, Miss You, Love You gives its grieving leads an opportunity to test drive the conversations they might one day have with their shared tormentor, especially once they realize that their brief co-habitance is low-stakes enough that they have nothing to lose by being honest with each other. Plus, getting live feedback from someone who understands what you’re going through is a lot better than practicing self-righteous takedowns to yourself in the bathroom mirror, isn’t it? Jim Rash should also get some credit for avoiding easy cliches and neat thematic shortcuts: A worse movie might have Jamie win Diane over enough that she encourages him to go after Tyler (spoilers: she does just the opposite), or have Diane admit that all her passive-aggression is just a refusal to deal with the fact that Tyler doesn’t depend on her anymore (spoilers: it isn’t). Real life is more nuanced than that, and Miss You, Love You doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. It does help us see ourselves a little better, though, and sometimes that’s all it takes for the real healing to begin.

Miss You, Love You hits HBO on Friday, May 29th.