An occasional moment to allow you a chance to pop your head above water and take a full breath before being swept away again would be welcome, but to wish for it would also be the kind of quibbling that the hateful school ‘n’ stay-at-home moms with whom Rachel must silently scream through coffees would adore. As we head into 2023’s Sundance Film Festival, Jesse Eisenberg ’s directorial debut, When You Finish Saving the World, is celebrating its wide release after premiering at last year’s. It’s all here – from the “greed is good” mantra no longer being a shocking slogan but an embedded philosophy to the different ways in which a man can be lauded and a woman abused. She dissects the divisions of domestic labour, the lies about marriage, the damage done by the “happy ever after” myth, the melancholy of midlife and the truths about motherhood. She mercilessly skewers the luxury habits treated as unassailable rights by the moneyed Manhattanites among which the Fleishmans move (but can never truly be part of because Toby’s job as a mere doctor means his salary tops out at $300,000 per annum). At first he assumes this is just another instance of her thoughtlessness and lack of maternal instinct, but suspicion and anxiety grow as days stretch into weeks and they receive no word from her.Īs we gather hints and clues and wait for the mystery of Rachel’s disappearance to be resolved, Brodesser-Akner anatomises – with endless wit – just about every possible modern malaise. It all starts when Toby wakes one morning to discover Rachel has dropped off the children overnight at his apartment for their weekend together and become unreachable by phone, email or anything else. The (crucially non-omniscient) narrator is his great friend from college, Libby ( Lizzy Caplan), married with two kids herself and semi-consciously living vicariously through Toby and his new sexual freedom, entangled though it is with loss, pain and bitterness. It is the story of Toby Fleishman’s (Jesse Eisenberg) divorce from his beloved but increasingly ambitious and difficult wife Rachel (Claire Danes) after 15 years of marriage and two children.
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