Lester (Eric Stoltz) doesn’t know who he wants to be, or the direction he intends to take his life. All he does know is that he’s unhappy where he is at the moment – having just turned thirty, he wanders aimlessly through his Brooklyn neighbourhood, cavorting with his fellow artistically-minded (read: thoroughly pretentious) friends and colleagues, attending gallery showings and obscure films at the local arthouse theatre. This is until he meets Ramona (Annabella Sciorra), a beautiful young tour guide and academic at a local museum (and mutual friend) who takes an immediate liking to Lester, who realizes the feeling is shared wholeheartedly. However, they seem to be a tad too hasty jumping into this relationship, because as the very prim and proper Lester soon learns, Ramona has had her fair share of lovers – she’s not unfaithful at all, and shows nothing but commitment to her current relationship, but rather has had many romantic pursuits in the past, which initially doesn’t seem to bother Lester. However, he gradually finds this fact eroding his sanity, especially when it comes to the presence of Dashiell (Chris Eigemen), a cocky young upstart who is making minor waves in literary circles for his debut book, a collection of self-reflective short stories, and who just so happens to be one of Ramona’s most notable former beaux. By sheer chance, Lester stumbles on Dashiell attending a group therapy session, and deciding to seize the day and use this as an opportunity to find out more about the kind of man his current girlfriend holds in her heart, he follows him in and soon joins the therapy session, under a different name – and while this plan works out initially, it begins to unravel, especially when Lester doesn’t account for the fact that he’s not the only perceptive person in the room at a given moment, and that the wool can’t easily be pulled over another’s eyes. 

Noah Baumbach sits in a strange position as a filmmaker – he’s an artist who has had several breakthroughs over the years, with each of his subsequent films inching him closer to a different faction of the general audience. Arguably the work that put him on the map in the most substantial way was The Squid and the Whale, his tender and heartbreaking drama about divorce, inspired by his own childhood, which brought a lot of attention to his abilities to craft a moving story from the most simple material. However, if we look back into the earlier days of his career, we tend to find a very different kind of filmmaker sitting at the helm – before he was a director focused on self-important stories that offered scathing critiques on cherished contemporary institutions, Baumbach was a playful and daring young provocateur who weaved together some unforgettable imagery from some very intimate concepts, as made very clear in Mr. Jealousy, the second film he made after his audacious debut, Kicking and Screaming. This is not a film that is remembered particularly well in terms of Baumbach’s oeuvre – it normally only comes up in discussions relating to either the various ways the face of American independent cinema changed in the 1990s under the guidance of young revolutionary filmmakers like Baumbach and his peers, or when the subject of his earlier work is mentioned. In either context, Mr. Jealousy is a footnote on an oddly long career, since despite being known for not working at a particularly fast pace, and prioritizing quality over quantity, Baumbach has directed nearly a dozen films, and while very few would regard this as one of his best, it’s nonetheless a wonderful experience to be able to see some of the raw, unfiltered genius that would be shaped into the precise and methodical perspective we’ve come to appreciate from the director over the years.

American independent cinema in the 1990s was defined by a particular brand of storytelling much of the time, where many films focused on a closely-knit group of urban young people (normally living in one of the major American metropolitans, such as New York City) navigating the “mean streets” that have almost entirely lost their edge, mainly through being trodden by such volatile, sensitive people who see every vaguely contradictory movement as opposition. Much of the time, these stories are an acquired taste, and can actually be unbearable when they’re not subjected to any real effort. However, Baumbach is a director who knows how to tell such a story without veering towards the unbearable, a skill that is certainly worthwhile to note, since even when dealing with characters at their most despicable, he doesn’t entirely abandon their humanity. Mr. Jealousy is all very much in line with everything here, being a dialogue-driven comedy about a group of yuppies working through various challenges in Brooklyn, none of which are really all that consequential or important in the grander scheme of things. Baumbach calibrates every moment with a kind of socially-charged energy, showcasing that he was just as involved in the intimate details of these characters’ sordid lives as he was in telling a compelling story of a radically changing city, another prominent theme that arose around this time in similar films, where outrageous comedy and melancholy longing merged together to create vivid portraits of a time and place in flux. It’s a masterful combination of tone and intention that works wonderfully the more we submerge ourselves in this world – and luckily, we’re never uncomfortable, with the humour being awkward but not stilted (a quality many lesser filmmakers at the time struggled with), and the characters just the right blend of idiotic and lovable.

It’s difficult to think of them as such today, but there was a period where the likes of Eric Stoltz, Chris Eigeman and Carlos Jacott reigned supreme in American independent cinema. Perhaps not the definition of movie stars (and possibly names that are perhaps only a few breaths shy of being entirely obscure by modern standards), they had a particular place in a specific era in filmmaking – and Baumbach captures their talents wonderfully, alongside equally impressive work being done by Annabella Sciorra and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, both of whom are better-known today, but still aren’t paid the tribute they deserve. Mr. Jealousy is brimming with the kind of peculiar energy that can only come from dedicated actors doing what they love – and the director gives every member of his cast, whether a major character or minor role (with the latter category including a memorable performance by the great film director Peter Bogdanovich, who similarly helped shaped New Hollywood in the same way Baumbach played a part in developing 1990s independent cinema), something interesting to do on screen. It may not always been the smoothest transition between characters, and some of them may occasionally come across as insincere or even slightly absurd – but considering Mr. Jealousy never aims to be a work of gritty, socially-charged realism, and functions more as a heightened critique of American society, we can expect Baumbach to push the boundaries of likability to a certain degree, which is something that the director has mastered effortlessly over the course of his career.

This all works in the context of the film, which grows into a darkly comical voyage into the pitch-dark souls of the urban elite, whose rotting hedonism is fertile ground for a stark and unforgiving portrait of a society gradually falling apart and becoming something truly terrifying, had it not been done with such a happy-go-lucky filter covering it. Mr. Jealousy is not a perfect film, and Baumbach has definitely made more polished achievements over the years – but it’s an earnest, interesting piece of cinema with a lot of heart and an even broader sense of humour that works well when we break it down beyond the point of contention at the heart of the story. It’s effortlessly watchable (Baumbach has a knack for fluidity in how these characters traverse their environment), and always punctuated by some deeper metaphysical edge that makes it more than just a group of selfish young adults wandering the streets of New York City. It only becomes more interesting the more we start to invest in these characters and their varying journeys – and the director invites us along for the ride, and we can’t help but be enthralled by the events that transpire in the process. Filled to the brim with a brutally funny rage towards social machinations, and told with the ferocious and unforgiving humour that Baumbach demonstrated best when he was at his most surreal, Mr. Jealousy is a charming dark comedy that reminds us how he is far more than just a one-trick pony, and that even one of his earlier, smaller films carries an immense amount of merit when we look beyond the surface level.