‘Shithouse': SXSW Grand Jury Prize Winner is a Warmly Talkative Gen-Z Romance [Review]

The big winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s canceled SXSW was “Shithouse,” from director Cooper Raiff. This is 22-year-old Raiff’s nano-budget debut and it feels like an incredibly personal statement from him. He writes, directs, and stars in the film, with a little added help from his friends. Raiff plays a shy and dorky freshman struggling to adapt to dorm life. It all changes when he meets fellow freshman Maggie (Dylan Gelula) and spends a memorable night with her - this is when the film truly hits its stride, drunk on the power of dialogue and romantic discovery. Things do get awkward the morning after; she starts ignoring him, he tries to get her back. You know the drill.

The film is driven by Raiff’s socially awkward acting style and by a -lack of- screenplay that feels improvised and naturally delivered by the young actors. The film works best when it zeroes in on the tiniest of details, the blossoming of romance, the sudden realization that something special is happening - think Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” and you’ll get a better picture of Raiff’s influences. It helps that Raiff and Gelula’s chemistry is second-to-none, you truly believe their characters are falling for each other and there is nary an inauthentic or false moment in the delivery of their roles.

Although ambitious in the way it refuses to adhere to conventional rom-com tropes, the inevitable does happen and familiarity slowly creeps into the movie. The last 15 or so minutes, which play out like a frustrating game of tying up narrative loose ends, have Raiff struggling to find a way to avoid the cliches and deliver a satisfactory conclusion. Before then, the film works, especially when it focuses on conversation and how love can blossom through the sheer exuberant feeling of speech.

This is that rare kind of college movie, one which takes pride in its youthful cynicism and pays tribute to the loneliness and sense of loss that can sometimes come in starting a new phase in life. Its naivete, the matter-of-fact way it believes in the science of attachment, turns out to be both a blessing and a curse for this movie. [B-]