Chestnut
Written and Directed by Jac Cron
Starring Natalia Dyer, Rachel Keller, and Danny Ramirez
Unrated
Running time: 1 hour and 27 minute
In select theaters June 21 and available on digital platforms on July 2

by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

In the past few years, love triangles have been all the rage. Between Challengers, Passages, and Past Lives–to name a few–viewers are spoiled for choice in watching messy relationship dynamics. I initially thought Chestnut would fit into this pantheon pretty easily, but it veers from the concept of a love triangle pretty quickly (no matter what the marketing might imply).

Written and directed by Jac Cron, Chestnut follows Annie (Natalia Dyer) as she flounders in Philadelphia. Supposedly preparing to move to Los Angeles for a finance job in the fall, she’s really just putting off packing and whiling away her days by smoking weed and going out at night. On one of those nights, she meets Tyler (Rachel Keller) and Danny (Danny Ramirez) at a bar, and she feels drawn to them, especially Tyler. Despite Danny warning Annie that Tyler isn’t that serious, Annie ends up questioning her life plans, pushes back her start date, and ponders staying in town instead, but as the summer plays out, we see Annie face who Tyler really is.

There’s tension between the three of them, and as previously mentioned, while the marketing seems to imply a love triangle, it’s not much more complicated than the first scene between the trio suggests. Annie and Tyler’s dynamic plays out pretty much exactly how you’d expect it to. The trio goes to bars, they have vague tension, and then someone goes home. When everything comes to a head, it never feels all that serious.

I struggled a bit with this film because I couldn’t exactly tell what was intentional. Annie and Danny seemed to have the grounds for a better friendship (and the actors have better chemistry) than she would’ve had with Tyler, but it’s not explored that much. Their brief conversation together goes deeper than pretty much any conversation between Annie and Tyler. Annie seems to spin out based on what Tyler thinks of her, but it’s obvious from the start (at least to me) that Tyler doesn’t see Annie the way Annie sees her.

The push-and-pull between Annie and Tyler is interesting at first, but it comes and goes too easily and then fizzles completely. When we find out Tyler’s motivation at the end, it feels cheap. She tells Annie that she cares about her and wants to stay in touch, but she seems to keep things at arm’s length. And again, I’m not sure if that’s how it’s supposed to feel or if it’s a failure on the film’s part.

The trio of actors does well, but I’m not sure I understand why Annie and Danny are stuck in Tyler’s orbit. Something between the erratic way the character is written and Rachel Keller’s performance just didn’t feel as magnetic as it’s supposed to. Natalia Dyer can deliver a disheveled and puzzled look with the best of them, but it feels disproportionate to what’s actually going on between Annie and Tyler.

This film is going for realistic tension between simple characters with understandable motivations, but it feels over-streamlined. Watching Annie do nothing but smoke, drink, and hang out with her friends for a whole summer, well, it just doesn’t give a viewer much to root for. The stakes are low, which can work, but it doesn’t here. If your story isn’t all that interesting by way of plot, then the characters have a lot of heavy lifting to do, and I’m not sure the trio in Chestnut was up to that task.

Visually, there’s some interesting work in the film. A lot of bi lighting and neon lights in bars reflected onto faces kept me plugged in for a while. But I’d like to have something meatier to keep things moving. I kept waiting for something to set the story afire, but Chestnut stays at the same level throughout, a low simmer.

Unfortunately, between the unfulfilled promise of the story and the bland characters, there’s not a lot here. It’s not a bad movie, just not a particularly interesting one. There are much more interesting films about love triangles, if that’s what you’re looking for.