Liberal Arts

Writer, director and star Josh Radnor’s second feature, Liberal Arts, is a romantic drama that fails to achieve its modest philosophical heights but is pleasant nonetheless. Radnor plays an intellectual in a mid-thirties slump who returns to his college for his mentor’s retirement and initiates a platonic affair with a pretty nineteen year-old, played by the talented Elizabeth Olsen.  The film could have been a fresh take on my favorite genre, the brief encounter, but I just don't share Radnor’s moral sensibility about the way people should act in the situation his characters find themselves in. Worse than simply not lining up with my personal beliefs, Randor's characters' virtuous principles preordain the outcome of their meeting from the beginning, leaving the picture with a very small narrative arc.  Thus, the interesting themes introduced in the story must be presented primarily through dialogue, which makes them come across too obviously. No one in the film takes much of a risk and therefore the dramatic stakes feel very low, and none of the characters seemed to change or develop much by the film's end. Still, the cast is excellent, and at least Radnor is trying to do something original here. Liberal Arts does at least make me look forward to seeing more of movies from this filmmaker who clearly thinks outside the box of traditional genre trappings.