A director (John David Washington) and his girlfriend (Zendaya) return home from his film’s premiere and argue through the night over their relationship with each other and to the film. 

Written and directed by Sam Levinson this is a two hander set in one location over one night that has a running time of 106 minutes. Whilst it is not as horrifically bad as Levinson’s last film Assassination Nation it does have the same pretentious overtones. 

Essentially for me this was about two narcissists spending a very long time arguing about which of them was more needy in the relationship or more jealous about the other. Every time one argument fizzled out I was left to wonder how on Earth they planned to fill out the running time and begin another. 

Initially it’s about his speech at the premiere, then it’s about a critics impending review, then the actual review and then how much the film may or may not have been based on his girlfriend’s life and so on and so forth. None of it is overly interesting in terms of content because at no point did I feel like I wanted this couple to survive the argument. The relationship felt so toxic that it seemed the most reasonable thing to do would be to end both it and the film. 

Allegedly the scene where Malcolm berates the female critic from the LA Times is a swipe at a critic who gave the aforementioned Assassination Nation a bad review. If true, given the content offered up here he has simply given her more ammunition for another bad review. 

There are three good things about the film though. The black and white cinematography and the performances from Washington and Zendaya. Unfortunately the script for those performances result in this just being a very long audition tape to show their versatile range.