Tribeca Festival Dispatch: Hal & Harper

Lili Reinhart, Mark Ruffalo, and Cooper Raiff in Hal & Harper. The independently-produced TV show screened this weekend at Tribeca Festival ahead of its release via Mubi. (Image Courtesy of Tribeca Festival)

“You really had to grow up way too fast.” That’s the apology that comes to Harper (Lili Reinhart) from her dad (Mark Ruffalo) in lo-fi indie TV series Hal & Harper.

He’s utterly wrong. Neither Harper nor her brother Hal (series creator and director Cooper Raiff) grew up. It doesn’t matter that Hal’s in college or Harper’s risking her first real adult relationship by cheating on her girlfriend (Alyah Chanelle Scott) with her colleague (series producer Addison Timlin), or that Dad is about to become a father again with his second wife, Kate (Betty Gilpin). They’ve been caught in a stasis of sorts since 2009, when Hal was just entering first grade and his big sister/protector Harper was in third grade.

That lack of internal growth is shown by an external mirror image. In a unique conceit that runs throughout the story, Raiff cast himself and Reinhart as Hal and Harper as kids and as twentysomethings. It’s a daring choice, of the kind that could only happen on a truly indie production. That’s why Raiff produced Hal & Harper under his own shingle, Small Ideas, with EP Clementine Quittner, before debuting at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The show got a special screening this weekend at the Tribeca Festival, hot on the heels of the announcement that it has been acquired by Mubi.

The casting choice is a gimmick, sure, but it’s one that shortcuts the passage of years and quickly turns into more than just an intriguing acting exercise. “Grown” Hal only makes sense when you see Raiff as a young boy, slightly slack-jawed, awkward, with that elementary school hunch, just as the disconnected “adult” Harper is that diffident, distant “pre-teen” version physically, if not socially or emotionally, grown.

That choice, and the psychological insight that flows from it, shows a major leap for Raiff as a writer/director. He retains his quiet, understated visual approach while growing the gently incisive analysis of relationships that snagged him a Grand Jury prize at South by Southwest 2020 for his debut feature, Shithouse. But just because he’s moved into longer form storytelling that doesn’t mean he’s breaking with his thematic interests. While Shithouse and Cha Cha Real Smooth are both about romantic relationships, all three of Raiff’s narrative creations circle around the disconnection of aging. In Shithouse, it’s the idea that a kid is suddenly supposed to be an adult just because they go to college. In Cha Cha, it’s the challenges of dating someone older or younger than yourself. Here, Hal and Harper are disconnected from the passage of time, desperately trying to process childhood trauma that they were too young to understand at the time and are now too old to see as anything other than personality traits.

Yet while the title of the show implies it’s really about the kids, much of it truly centers on Ruffalo. His rumbled charm is blunted in favor of a brittleness as the father who is constantly terrified that all he’s ever done is screw up from a pivotal day when he was stood in the family home with the kids and a rip in his jeans and no idea what to do next. It’s a remarkable portrait of self-sabotage and self-destruction that fits the increasingly haggard Ruffalo perfectly as he patrols that same empty family home. When you finally see the moment that broke his family it’s a stomach-dropping moment.

But this isn’t simply about the inward gaze of their dysfunctional family dynamic. So while the part of the new stepmom is the smallest, it’s also essential to take this three-way dance and turn it into a pas de quatre. Anyone coming into their looping equation must navigate the fact that, whichever of the three you’re with, you’re really taking on all three. Gilpin, as always, is extraordinary as the far-from-wicked stepmother who’s dealing with their constant agony, all leading to a very unexpected final shot that quietly advocates for the trio’s loving dysfunction. It’s a definitional moment for Raiff, who excels in exploring the awkward, ragged nature of relationships. By making this story a TV show rather than a movie, he’s growing into even more of his potential.