Like Kamilah Forbes’s Between the World and Me, Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie, and Doug Liman’s Locked Down, Natalie Morales’s Language Lessons is clearly the product of our lockdown era, and it has a premise that’s particularly well-suited to its technical limitations. Mark Duplass (who co-wrote the screenplay with Morales) plays Adam, a new long-distance student of Costa Rica-based Spanish tutor Cariño (Morales). Enrolled on the course as a birthday gift by his wealthy husband, Will (Desean Terry), he quickly strikes up a bond with Cariño, which becomes even stronger in the wake of an unexpected tragedy.
The film’s action takes place almost exclusively via a series of webcam chats, often switching back and forth between laptop screens within a scene, and it’s a testament to the engaging performances that this setup mostly transcends its initial awkwardness. And while the actors’ separation limits how much chemistry they can create, it also occasionally lends their scenes a rawness that they might have lacked in a more conventional film, throwing moments of vulnerability into sharper focus as the characters look directly into the camera.
Language Lessons likewise takes advantage of its restricted perspectives to expand on its central conflict in intriguing ways. Aware of how his luxury home contrasts with Cariño’s more humble surroundings, Adam gradually confesses to feelings of guilt about his apparent privilege relative to her, and the fact that their video calls provide such limited information is an effective way of illustrating just how little they can understand about each other’s lives.
Like Alex Lehmann’s Paddleton, which Duplass also co-wrote and starred in, Language Lessons attests to his interest in the platonic romance as one of the more unsung relationship arrangements in cinema. Both films exude a low-key warmth, but the characters here are less idiosyncratic, which means that they may clear a basic likeability threshold but can only take the story so far. Though there are occasional hints that Cariño might be performing for the camera and not allowing Adam in on all the details of her life outside of their lessons, the film’s framing device prevents this idea from being explored in any meaningful way. In the absence of any private moments or real-world interactions, conversations can become overly expository, as they’re forced to do most of the heavy narrative lifting on their own.
After she accidentally turns on her webcam during a previously voice-only call and briefly reveals a bruised face and black eye to Adam, an embarrassed Cariño abruptly retreats into a more professional student-teacher relationship with him, newly keen to keep her personal life hidden. The pair are eventually forced to confront their differences, and a few arguments too-explicitly spell out the insecurities and stereotypical assumptions that are threatening their blossoming friendship. Early on, the class, ethnic, and gender tensions that lurk beneath the surface of this kind of inter-cultural exchange are teased out quite subtly, so it’s a shame when the story takes a more literal approach to its themes, and its slightly contrived final plot revelation is also perhaps one too far. Had the film trusted its self-imposed minimalism a little more, it might have been a lot more successful as a character study.
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