Few directors make romantic comedies about exes, but they should. It’s just as relatable to see why two people decide to call it quits because of luck, timing and temperament as it is watching them happily pair off. Joe Swanberg’s “The Sun Never Sets” is a reminder that discarded partners also have movie-worthy drama — too much of it for the couple, perhaps, but plenty for our amusement.
Indie auteur Swanberg (“Hannah Takes the Stairs,” “Drinking Buddies”) specializes in naturalistic dramedies about people lost in the liminal stage between adolescence and adulthood. We used to call that our 20s but some people get stuck there for decades. Some never leave.
Here, his heroine is Wendy (Dakota Fanning), an outdoorsy 31-year-old construction worker in Anchorage, Alaska, who is the last of her female friends to build a domesticated home life. Instead, she’s squatting in one, semi-committing to an older divorced dad, Jack (Jake Johnson), whose children are young enough that Wendy doesn’t sleep over most nights. At the dinner table, Wendy looks and acts more like one of the kids than their potential stepmother, especially when she makes Jack promise to make pancakes in the morning.
Wendy and Jack could play house like this for years. But with the wisdom of a man who’s already experienced marriage and parenthood and refuses to do either again, Jack insists that she embark on a six-month sexual rumspringa to see if she can find a better mate — perhaps a younger guy who wants babies or a fellow nature-lover who also likes to camp. Shot on location, Eon Mora’s cinematography swoons every time it takes in ice-blue lakes as the soundtrack cues a stream of cutesy pop songs, most of which are pretty good.
In a normal rom-com, this is where Jack would exit stage left as the martyr who nudged Wendy toward her true soulmate. But Jack’s magnanimous offer is also a booby trap. He’s confident that he’s a great catch: a financially secure charmer who coaches his daughter’s basketball team. Ideally, Wendy will come back fully choosing him. On a video chat with his friend (or virtual therapist, it’s unclear), Jack jokes that Alaska is just “a bunch of goofy guys who smell like salmon.” How much competition could he have?
Plenty. Other suitors quickly come sniffing around, including Wendy’s ex-boyfriend Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), a rakish sea pilot who seems close to perfect for her despite, or perhaps because of, their overlapping flaws, including impulsiveness and an affection for dive bars. It helps that the script soft-pedals why they broke up, although Smith dangles hints of Chuck’s previous bad behavior while sincerely avowing that he’s changed.
Wendy’s sweet and silly acquaintance Brad (Brandon Daley), an awkward giant, reveals his long-lingering crush on her and, in one hilariously pathetic moment, gifts her a banana-shaped flask as an inside joke that she doesn’t remember at all. Meanwhile, Wendy’s pregnant pal best friend Lindsay (Debby Ryan), eyes flashing with frustration that she’s not allowed to dictate her best friend’s decisions, also sets up a blind date with her selection, Danny (Tim Nienhueser), a solid dude with great hair. As if Wendy’s hands, heart and day planner weren’t full enough, a panicky Jack determines to win her back, much to her torment.
The script doesn’t judge Wendy for going out with half of Anchorage. She’s enacting the No. 1 piece of advice I give all my straight, single female pals suffering from go-nowhere serial monogamy: Date a minimum of three men. One man takes up the mental space of a boyfriend. Two men becomes a binary competition with the assumption that one will win. Three men reminds a girl that she’s committed only to trusting her own best judgment. That might sound libertine but it’s actually closer to how old school courtship used to function, before the sexual revolution added the extra weight of physical intimacy and guilt.
But don’t look to Wendy as a model of healthy self-actualization. Swanberg has her go about it all wrong, slinking between bedrooms rumpled and distraught, promising each lover in turn that she won’t see the previous one again. (I’m not sure what Swanberg’s title means other than emphasizing the spotlight on her hermetically small dating pool, or the running gag of seeing tipsy, nocturnal behavior take place before dusk.) With the certainty of someone who’s seen hundreds of rom-coms, I started the film confident that Wendy would wind up with someone. Wendy seems to believe that too, which adds to her desperation.
Yet as ever, Swanberg prefers to show the real experience of dating, not its Hollywoodized ideal. He’s willing to place intriguing romantic possibilities in Wendy’s path that she obliviously kicks out of the way, making the point that love is capricious. Fanning’s Wendy isn’t reflective — she’s reactive — and we have a better view of her predicament than she does. We’re blessed that Fanning survived the transition from precocious child actor to grown-up movie star with the skills to play a fictional disaster rather than be one offscreen.
Above all, Swanberg is interested in one strand of this knotty dilemma: how an ex turns from trash to treasure the minute someone else claims them from the dumpster. It’s fascinating to watch Jack and Wendy jealously yank the power balance back and forth. Still, their emotionally ruinous tug-of-war goes on for so many rounds that the movie limps toward the end credits exhausted.
The film plays hard to get with its own ideas, frustrating audiences who just want to see Fanning fall in love. Swanberg isn’t the type to force his characters to announce themes in a big speech. His ordinary folks freeze up and stop short of saying what they think or scream things they don’t mean, or get distracted from fixing a problem that wouldn’t even take much work. Johnson’s Jake is particularly prone to changing his mind within a scene, practically letting us see the moments when his brain pops out of his body to bash itself against the nearest wall.
I was infatuated with the movie for honoring the thwarted relationships that make us who we are, even though they don’t make it down the aisle. Alas, right at the film’s finish line, Swanberg backstabs his own commitment to honesty when one of Wendy’s pursuers impresses her with a magical ex machina. I suppose he wanted us to leave the theater smiling. But this roundheeled rom-com’s most unjustified betrayal is its happy ending.
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