‘Fantasy Life’ Review: Babysitting Your Psychiatrist’s Grandkids Goes About as Well as You’d Expect
Take a moment to think about how many professional opportunities would have to slip through your fingers before you seriously considered taking a babysitting job for your therapist.
That should give you a sense of how much Sam (Matthew Shear) has going for himself in “Fantasy Life.” A once-promising law student whose crippling anxiety has slowed his legal career, Sam finds himself laid off from a firm that was already asking him to do little more than alphabetize long-obsolete boxes of files. With bills piling up and a deep sense of purposelessness that hasn’t improved since he took a mental health break from Fordham Law School nearly a decade ago, an offer to babysit his shrink’s three granddaughters while their dad plays bass with Gov’t Mule seems like an opportunity that’s depressingly worthy of his time.
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Of course, such an opportunity doesn’t arise out of thin air — you need to be part of an incestuously nosy social circle first. Sam only began seeing his therapist because he’s a friend of his parents, so the doctor’s wife/receptionist already knows that the young man is out of work. As Sam discretely tries to slip out of an appointment, she reminds him that he used to play with her now-grown son David (Alessandro Nivola) when their families belonged to the same racket club decades ago. The young couple is in a pinch for childcare after their nanny situation fell through, and Sam can’t quite find a reason to say no to an easy gig that pays $300 a night.
Watching the three daughters is a manageable task, but Sam’s real challenge is navigating the complex relationship between his two employers, David and his wife Dianne (Amanda Peet). Two wealthy, attractive creatives who live off of massive trust funds while pursuing their passions and raising their children in opulence shouldn’t have too many problems, but they’ve inevitably found ways to create a few. A beanie-loving rocker, David thinks that his life of lavish domesticity is keeping him from the life of hedonistic adventure he craves. Dianne sees him as inadequately sympathetic to the sense of purposeless that she feels after her acting career took a backseat to motherhood. Their marriage is a tinderbox, and Sam turns out to be the anxious, people-pleasing spark that lights the entire thing aflame.
The nervous manny isn’t most people’s idea of a sexy extramarital affair candidate, but he’s everything Dianne needs to wash the taste of David out of her mouth. He’s kind, empathetic, a great listener, and completely enamored with her in a way that the former movie star hasn’t felt in years. As the family prepares for a summer trip to Martha’s Vineyard with their extended family — and, naturally, Sam’s shrink — the two fall into an overly intimate friendship that exposes so many of the bonds holding up this family for the fantasies that they are.
A first-time writer-director, Shear has previously appeared in four Noah Baumbach movies (“Marriage Story,” “The Meyerowitz Stories,” “Mistress America,” and “While We’re Young”). And “Fantasy Life” wears that influence on its sleeve. A neurotic portrait of creative class New Yorkers who do everything in their power to drown out their own privilege with self-inflicted problems, “Fantasy Life” pulls from Baumbach as liberally as Baumbach pulled from Woody Allen. It doesn’t get any points for originality, but executes its premise adeptly enough to render that criticism irrelevant. The script is consistently honest and interesting without wading too far into cliches, and crisp editing ensures that scenes never last a sentence longer than they need to. And while “Fantasy Life” follows in the footsteps of artists who made careers out of anxious protagonists, its portrayal of anxiety demonstrates an understanding of the disorder that feels more modern than its predecessors.
Shear inhabits Sam with enough neuroses to make Alvy Singer look like George Clooney. There’s no way to spin his anxiety as charming, he’s just a man burdened by mental illness to the point where you begin to feel guilty for enjoying a film about his existence. The lack of an attempt at glamorization saves the film, and by the end you’re simultaneously grateful that you experienced the story and happy to never be responsible for this character’s problems ever again.
For a film whose setup promises salacious drama, “Fantasy Life” ends up being rather constrained in what it delivers. But the story never leaves us with a sense that anything is incomplete, as Shear eloquently portrays the ways that near-misses can still feel like cataclysmic life events. When so much of our lives are spent fantasizing about what could be, it eventually becomes impossible to separate the act from living itself.
Grade: B+
“Fantasy Life” premiered at SXSW 2025. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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