Date night becomes fight night in director Andrew de Burgh’s The Jazz Club, a 90-minute verbal wrestling match between a man and a woman who have wildly different expectations for how their romantic evening is going to go. For better or worse, you got ringside seats.
Jimmy (Cayman Cardiff) owns a jazz club in Hollywood, and it’s his pride and joy, so what better place to sit down with his girlfriend of one year, Sarah (Marie Elizabeth DeWitt), to tell her how much she means to him, and what he wants for their future. Only, Sarah has some bad news: she wants to break up. Crestfallen, Jimmy nonetheless rallies, starting the timer on his attempt to convince her that whatever it is, they can work through it.
The purity of concept of The Jazz Club, having the entire movie be one flowing conversation between just two actors seated across a table, is commendable, and Cardiff and DeWitt wrote the script together with de Burgh. Despite the writers’ room, Jimmy and Sarah’s conversation circles itself, following a stuck pattern of Jimmy lavishing syrupy compliments on Sarah while she tries different reasons why they shouldn’t be together, hoping one might convince Jimmy.
“Sarah has some bad news: she wants to break up …”
It makes the script one half lovebombing by Jimmy and one half cliché evasions on the part of Sarah, and together, it has the effect of Sarah trying to claw her way out of the bar with Jimmy wrapped around one of her ankles, pleading with her not to go. We’ve all been out one night and had the misfortune of being seated near a fighting couple. The Jazz Club is for the sickos who want the experience to be movie-length.
Adding to the circling feeling is the shot selection. Filmed across one table with three shot angles (a two-person wide shot, and a shot/reverse shot), the combination of non-stop talk and limited visual expression adds to the repetitive feeling of Sarah and Jimmy’s fateful night.
If you go into The Jazz Club expecting a moving treatise on what feelings love can inspire between two people, you will be disappointed; but if you view The Jazz Club as a satire of the genre’s clichés, you’ll have more fun, so if you’re someone who likes to roll their eyes at weepy monologues and finds sick pleasure in observing toxic relationships, you will get all of that with The Jazz Club – then it’s up to you whether you laugh, scoff, or watch through your fingers
"…it’s up to you whether you laugh, scoff, or watch through your fingers"
