Beginning in 2008, frugality became the new luxury. The bling that was in a few years prior became excessive and the winnowing of credit card debt became the fashion of the moment. People began going green less out of compassion for the environment, and more of a means to limit their electric and gas bills. As we eek ourselves into 2012, the EKG-like stock market continues to peak and plunge, dependent of rumors and guesses, potentials sanctions and blockades. These ups and downs have both provided us with a minor sense of fiscal hope while providing a bi-weekly reminder that what looks solid is still built on a precarious foundation.
Wanderlust cannot be classified as either a characteristically Paul Rudd or Jennifer Aniston movie (truthfully, it’s somewhere in between being funny and silly), but it does offer a lens on our seemingly endemic need to spend what we have when we have it to, momentarily, secure some superficial standing.
As a married couple, George and Linda move about New York City as transient apartment dwellers. George works for a Bernie-Madoff like boss whose façade offers a wink and a smile, but whose dirty dealings bring down the company, forcing George out of a job. Linda is a documentarian – for the moment – whose film about penguins with testicular cancer is rejected by HBO. She’s held a bevy of jobs, capriciously tries various career paths, and “has no major,” three facets to her personality that place the financial burden on George.
Before George’s firing and Linda’s rejection, the two purchase a “micro-loft” in the West Village of Manhattan. The euphemistic play on “studio apartment” is cute illustrates how consumers want to be original, even if it’s in a rather perfunctory way. A “micro-loft” suggests the “new” while “studio” is reminiscent of a college student’s dorm room. Regardless, they pay too much for too little space because it’s “time for us to own something.” After all, they’re “not kids anymore.”
After the couple’s occupational debacle, they’re forced to leave New York, absconding to Georgia to live temporarily with George’s brother Rick, (Ken Marino), a philandering millionaire who rents porta-potties to construction companies and whose housewife’s mantra is “If you smile all the time, you can trick your brain into thinking you’re happy.” This sentiment speaks volumes to those who establish an identity through superficial aesthetics, but it also conjures the conflict that drives George and Linda back to Elysium, a bed and breakfast / commune run by the brain-cell-depleted Carvin (Alan Alda) and the charismatic everyman, Seth (Justin Theroux). The events at Elysium are predictable and sometimes funny. Flaws are exposed in George and Linda’s relationship, conflict ensues, Linda finds her voice, George goes a bit bananas, infidelity rears its head, the movie becomes a bit more about sexual conquest than self-discovery – and there’s a nudist who triples as a wine maker and an author.
The bigger point in Wanderlust is its subtext about the metropolis – specifically New York City. The ending is rather happy and foreseeable, but not cloying enough to gag. At the same time, the city itself is represented true to form: an existence that accepts its denizens indifferently providing they keep the arteries in and out of the city pumping with commerce.
In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, James Weldon Johnson writes “New York City is the most fatally fascinating thin in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments – constantly enticing thousand from far within…And all these become the victims of her caprice.” While this angle is not highlighted as much as Linda’s hallucinogenic trip or the various innuendo about threesomes and free love, the city’s overarching control is apparent in the bookends of Wanderlust. As the film begins, the real estate agent pushes the “hot neighborhood” on George and Linda to fill her pocket with commission, but when they need to sell – only a few days later – it’s no longer a buyer’s market. The transaction keeps the agent employed and the space occupied, but when George and Linda are removed from the rotating economy, they become expendable. Seemingly, they are not even allowed to find a less expensive apartment in an outer borough. Rather, they must evacuate the city immediately, along with their uselessness. The real estate agent is also mirrored in George’s boss, who, moments before being raided by Federal agents, give the impression that George is about to receive a promotion. In both cases, honesty loses its meaning and is merely a tactic of salesmanship to keep the currency flowing.
At the end of the film, George and Linda reconcile – sorry for the spoiler, but it seems obvious, no? – and move back to New York. While they’re not in the same apartment, they are only welcomed back because they’re opened their own business as a publishing company / bookstore. Their business and their domicile are one in the same, and, for the moment, they are allowed to stay. But, it’s fair to say that they shouldn’t get too comfortable. Books with tangible pages are rapidly transitioning to the confines of digital margins, and then where will George and Linda go?
