What Happens Later

There’s a moment near the beginning of the bittersweet What Happens Later that channels the tricky tone of this throwback of a movie with one foot in a film genre that peaked over two decades ago. While waiting to board a flight at the gate of an unnamed regional airport, a frustrated William (Duchovny) vainly searches for a working electrical outlet to charge his mobile phone and finally comes upon an oversized illuminated film poster promoting a movie entitled Rom Com with the cheesy tagline “Fall in Love With Love Again.” Without a second thought, he casually unplugs the lighted billboard. Poof! The advertisement instantly extinguishes into a black nothingness. The invitation to everlasting allure is withdrawn in the blink – and, make no mistake, wink – of an eye.

It’s a startling moment in a movie that inhabits the same metaverse in which Harry once met Sally, insomniacs would lay awake in Washington state, and an annoying ding announced an AOL email. The adorably nose-scrunching female avatar of those Nineties-era movies, the long absent Meg Ryan, is a triple-threat presence here: As actor, co-writer and, (for the first time since her 2015 directorial debut, Ithaca), director, her presence makes this punchline preceding the joke all the more fascinating. But What Happens Later isn’t a deconstructed eulogy for an often unfairly maligned genre with roots in the venerated traditions of the screwball comedy. Rather, it’s more a reality check on the all-too-often broken promise of happily-ever-after. Sometimes, things simply don’t work out.

In this adaptation of Austin playwright's Steven Dietz’s Shooting Star, middle-aged ex-paramours Bill and Willa (Ryan) bump into one another in an airport terminal on a snowy Leap Day, approximately 25 years after their relationship abruptly ended. At first, the reunion is a bit awkward, their small talk barely concealing the friction remaining between them. But after their respective flights are delayed due to unprecedented severe weather and the snowbound pair become stranded overnight, they engage in a revelatory postmortem of why it didn’t work out. At times, it’s an emotionally painful walk down a memory lane marked by bumps of recrimination and potholes of lingering bad feelings. This scenario would challenge any director to keep the dialogue going without allowing the words to bog the movie down, but Ryan deftly figures out ways to keep it relatively fresh within the physically constrained landscape of the airport terminal. This sophomore directorial effort is no slump.

As the preternatural night wears on, What Happens Later takes on a surreal and theatrical quality, an artifice that’s foreshadowed by the frequent intrusion of the disembodied male voice of the airport announcer (Liggett), who performs double duty as an omniscient spokesperson for the Universe. His observational commentary sometimes can be a bit precious, but it more often than not gives the movie a lift. The last half hour is too long, but the goofily romantic coda of two departing planes whose exhaust forms the hint of a heart in the sky is about as happy an ending that you could hope for here.

Ryan and Duchovny hold their own in this talky two-hander, navigating their characters’ highs and lows with conviction. (The exception: two ill-advised rants in which each near literally shake their fists heavenward. Eek!) Bill and Willa are prototypes as much as they are flesh-and-blood persons – he’s a pragmatic financier who despises New Age bullshit, she’s a combat-boot-wearing optimist who carries a rain stick – but each of the actors finds some discerning truth in their characters’ attempts to reconcile the past. A young audience may not fully appreciate the existential quandary the two principals face here. But those with a little more life under their belts will likely feel differently. “Who cares what old people have on their mind?” Willa rhetorically asks at one point. You’d be surprised.