Differences make relationships much more difficult.Race has always been the difference movies latch on to, but religion and age are pretty important as well.
While differences make the main characters’ relationship difficult in the new movie “Prime,” what they share makes things worse – What if you told your therapist intimate details about your new love-interest only to find out your therapist was your significant other’s mother?
“Prime” follows 37-year-old divorcee Rafi (Uma Thurman), who works in the high-end fashion industry and lives in New York’s Greenwich Village. She works through her fears of intimacy with her therapist, Upper West Side-dwelling Dr. Lisa Metzger (Meryl Streep), and, unbeknownst to Rafi, Lisa’s 23-year-old, closet-artist son David (Bryan Greenberg).
The film is like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” on steroids. Instead of the issue of mixed race couples, this movie tackles disparate age and religion.
David is a young Jewish kid with very little worldly experience and a close relationship with his family (he lives with his grandparents). Rafi is an older, nonpracticing Catholic from a broken family (on top of the fact she has been married and divorced).
The film weaves through the couple attempting to gain acceptance from parents and from peers, all the while showing the way their backgrounds result in a bit of culture shock.
David has to accept Rafi’s gay friends and high-strung colleagues. Rafi has to work through the fact David doesn’t have a steady job yet, has a vastly different lifestyle and his family doesn’t want him dating gentiles. If that isn’t enough, both have to deal with the fact that David’s mother has continued as Rafi’s therapist and knows intimate details of their sex-life. These issues are just the obvious ones on the surface.
“Prime” is a funny movie taking on very complex relationship issues, making it a good coming-of-age film and an even better date movie.
If you and your date have very different backgrounds, however, you may get forced into a serious conversation afterward.
