Written and directed by Hannah Marks
Starring Hayley Law, Ben Rosenfield, Sofia Bryant, and Odessa A’zion
Running time 1 hour and 30 minutes
Unrated

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Mary, Mark & Some Other People, the third film from actor/writer Hannah Marks (who also wrote last year’s Banana Split), is about a pair of newlyweds who explore an open relationship. Mary (Hayley Law, Riverdale) and Mark (Ben Rosenfied, Boardwalk Empire) have a Meet Cute at a gas station. The speaker plays Amy Grant’s “Baby, Baby.” I’m happy to see that a song from an album that I was gifted for my 10th birthday has cross-generational appeal. Mark remembers Mary from college, but Mary doesn’t remember Mark. They’re both in their mid-20s. Mary is blunt with a casual, natural confidence. She wears crochet halter tops. Mark has an unironic mustache. Mary came to the gas station to buy a pregnancy test. As Mary awaits the results, she asks Mark to break the tension by singing a song. Mark starts scatting while Mary giggles. It’s negative. They fall in love.

MM&SOP is about how a young couple navigates things they consider “adult.” They get married. They like to party, have sex, and entertain their creative pursuits while working quirky day jobs; he walks dogs, she dresses as a sexy maid to clean homes. But what Mark and Mark have does not look like love. They don’t communicate well. They never know how to switch between being playful and serious. They party like college kids, because, well, they are. When talking with her bandmates (played by Sofia Bryant and Odessa A’zion, the latter who is instantly recognizable as the daughter of Pamela Adlon), Mary realizes that her “adult” relationship is stale. She doesn’t want to become a “crusty married person.” Her sister plants the idea in her of an open relationship. Intrigued, she brings it up casually to Mark, who is offended. Mary insists monogamy isn’t natural. He accuses her of being “too woke.” She brings up ethical non-monogamy. Eventually he caves in, so they set “the rules,” which are introduced via a candy-colored title card in cute, lower-case font that looks, intentionally, like the end credits for Clueless.

There are some genuinely funny moments in MM&SOP. When Mark’s friend Kyle (Nik Dodani), casually uses a derogatory term for gay men and his friends shame him for it, he replies “I’m bisexual, I can say anything.” Mark is allergic to latex so Mary mocks him for his “special needs condoms.” When Mark insists that wolves are monogamous, Mary retorts, “wolves are terrifying!” Hannah Marks, who also directs this time around as well, succeeds with an unlikely task. She makes these idealistic, Los Angeles Millenial-hipster types enjoyable to be around. They have plausible day jobs. They talk like real young people. The script seems to favor Mary over Mark, or at least, Hayley Law gives the more sympathetic performance. A few celebrities provide cameos of varying efficacy. Gillian Jacobs (who was in I Used to Go Here with Marks), plays a deadpan gynecologist. Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Joe Lo Truglio shows up as an annoyed neighbor. Meanwhile, Lea Thompson is oddly cast as a free-spirited aunt with an open relationship of her own, a moment that could have been scrapped.

It’s not clear what Marks is trying to say about open relationships, if anything, although I have some suspicions. There seems to be another layer missing of who Mary and Mark were before they met that could have given the film a little more depth. Mary mentions a dead mother in passing. Mark alludes to a close relationship with his dad. In some ways this film reminded me of a funnier version of Katie Asleton’s The Freebie, although lighter and from the perspective of a different generation. As a “crusty married person,” I was initially in a position to not like MM&SOP, but ultimately I was won over by the energy of the cast and the mature approach to its themes.