Maggie's Plan. 2015. USA. Written and directed by Rebecca Miller. Based on a story by Karen Rinaldi. With Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Wallace Shawn. 35mm. 98 min.
Rebecca Miller’s fifth feature is a surprisingly breezy romantic comedy that retains the slice-of-life complexity signature to her earlier works. Greta Gerwig stars as the titular Maggie, a young professional in New York who decides it’s time to have a child, despite her lack of a boyfriend or husband. After some trial and error, she succeeds via an affair with the esteemed author John Harding (Ethan Hawke), who leaves his wife, the more-esteemed author Georgette Nørgaard (Julianne Moore), for Maggie and their new daughter. Eventually, Maggie realizes this new life isn’t everything she wanted, and begins angling to reunite John with Georgette (who describes Maggie as “so pure, and a little stupid.”) Buoyed by supporting turns from Wallace Shawn, Maya Rudolph and Bill Heder, Maggie’s Plan serves up a hilarious inside-baseball portrayal of the delusions of New York City’s creative class while also performing a brutal autopsy of where exactly writers get their inspiration from.