Hello I Must Be Going (2012)

Amy (Lynskey) has spent the three months following her divorce holed up in her parents house, lazing around in a scruffy t-shirt while watching the films of the Marx brothers. Despite the best efforts of her increasingly frustrated mother (Danner) to get her back on her feet, Amy refuses to leave the house. When her lawyer father hosts a dinner in an attempt to secure a valuable client, Amy ends up making out with the nineteen year old son (Abbott) of one of the guests. Despite Amy's reservations, an awkward and secretive relationship develops between the two.
Ten years ago, director Louiso gave Philip Seymour Hoffman his first leading role with the warmly comic 'Love Liza'. His latest outing treads similar territory, with it's lead character struggling to cope with a newly acquired, and unwanted, singlehood, and could provide the breakout role for Lynsky. The New Zealand actress has been around for the last two decades, first appearing in Peter Jackson's 'Heavenly Creatures'. While her co-star from that film, Kate Winslet, went on to become a household name, Lynskey has had to settle for bit parts and a stint on TV's 'Two and a Half Men'. Here she proves she can carry a film herself with a performance both tragic and comic.
There's not a whole lot here you haven't seen before but Louiso and Lynskey manage to create a character that you just enjoy spending time with. In a way it's the antithesis of something like 'Young Adult' which opts for the easy route of creating a wretched lead. It's very easy for a screenwriter to create an unlikeable character, giving us one as charming as Amy is far more difficult. As her argumentative mother, Danner is equally impressive and the scenes between the two are the movie's best. 'Hello I Must Be Going' is a refreshingly non-judgmental take on the theme of May-to-December romances with yet another central performance shamefully overlooked by awards panels.