Lola Versus (review)

So awesome, universe! The world hasn’t been full enough yet of movies about women who are almost totally obsessed almost exclusively with romance that we cannot use one more of them. Hoorah! Thank you, creative powers that be, for giving us New Yorker Lola (Greta Gerwig: Arthur), whose life is powered by faux random hipster crap -- macrobiotics! “I always forget that Times Square exists”! -- and sexual despair. Sure, Lola may be insecure, shallow, and stupid (what’s that? she’s working on a dissertation about 19th century French literature? that’s cute! she gets to play with her laptop sometimes), but that makes her Everywoman, amirite, ladies? LOL! Except most of us are not fabulous enough to have a lady best friend who’s outrageously crude, like Lola’s pal Alice (cowriter Zoe Lister Jones: The Other Guys) with her random “I have to do wash my vagina,” or a guy best friend like Henry (Hamish Linklater: Battleship), who’s totally madly in love with us, of course! Desperate singletonness is naturally the lot of such a gal as Lola (and all the rest of us), because what else are women supposed to think about apart from romance? We’d be miserable if we weren’t miserable, amirite? Also: Self slut-shaming! It’s the new “Does this make my ass look fat?”! When her fiancé (Joel Kinnaman: Safe House) bails on her mere weeks before their wedding, Lola descends into a fugue of junk-food consumption and an inability to dress herself -- that’s why we get multiple “what the hell am I gonna wear in public oh crap I’m so fat and ugly!” montages from director and cowriter Daryl Wein, who clearly understands the modern woman. A 30-year-old woman’s extended adolescence: it’s new 30-year-old man’s extended adolescence. Feminism FTW!