Easy Living (2017) Reviews

• A Peculiar Story about a Woman Trying to Turn Her Life Around

  JustCuriosity2017-03-16

  Easy Living seemed to be warmly-received in its world premiere at Austin's SXSW Film Festival. It is entertaining quirky film about Sherry Graham, a door-to-door makeup saleswoman, who is struggling to fix her rather messy life. The writer/director Adam Keleman has crafted a strong lead character. The lead actress, Caroline Dhavernas, delivers a really strong performance. Sherry is trying to turn a corner and escape her dead end job and really her dead end life. While much of the film is entertaining and provocative, the bizarre ending doesn't really do the rest of the movie justice. It is as if the Keleman wrote himself into a corner and couldn't figure out how to get out of it so he just came up with a completely unanticipated and illogical way to resolve the story. It is unfortunate, because it undermines the intelligence nuanced writing and acting that had occurred up to that point.

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• "I Am the Architect of My Life"

  lavatch2018-08-05

  At first glance, "Easy Living" appears to a Lifetime-style film about a woman who is highly motivated to turn her life around. Her alcoholism led her to abandon her daughter to the care and upbringing of her sister. But now, Sherry is now a dynamic direct-to-consumer salesperson of cosmetics. In the opening scene of the film, the protagonist confidently proclaims that "I am the architect of my life." Her motivational practices have clearly instilled in her some good skills in sales, as she works efficiently in knocking on doors and making some earnings on commission. But as the film develops, we see another, insecure side of Sherry where she resides in a motel, picks up men in bars, and has failed over a ten-year period to contribute financially to the upbringing of her daughter. Sherry is sensitive to a stray dog and has genuine rapport with her clients. But to the people who matter most in her life, she is oddly distant. It doesn't help that she is drinking heavily and avoiding her AA meetings. There was a salient moment in the film where Sherry walks into the bedroom of her sister to borrow a shirt, so she can have a tryst with a man who has yet to finalize his divorce. When Sherry opens the drawer, she discovers her sister's gun and holds it up to the mirror, as if preparing to shoot. By that time in the film, Sherry is so unpredictable that basically anything can happen, especially when she takes the gun with her without informing the sister. As it turns out, the gun figures prominently in the bizarre conclusion of the film. The ending involves a plot twist that makes the film inherently dishonest. One question to ponder at the end is the following: There are instances when people have won lotteries, and their lives take an ironic turn for the worse because of their good luck. It should be fairly clear that if Sherry won a Powerball jackpot, she would eventually return to reside in the shabby motel room.

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• Very Relatable In a Surprising Way

  sdshapi2018-03-11

  I stumbled upon this gem of an indie by Adam Keleman and anchored by the phenomenal acting of Caroline Dhavernas. The film was incredibly well written and directed, and the acting by Caroline Dhavernas was more than impressive. I found that the struggles of the main character, Sherry, who perhaps was quite misunderstood, as she tried to find her way, were very relatable. Sherry was ambitious in her career and very caring, as was evidenced in numerous scenes, but at the same time struggled to actually find herself and figure out a way to attain the things she truly wanted out of life. I look forward to more projects from Adam Keleman, Caroline Dhavernas, the supporting cast and crew (the cinematography was remarkably impressive - particularly for what I understand was a no to low budget film) those that are already accomplished and those that are just making a name for themselves.

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• Just no story

  esperanzahousmans2017-09-22

  The story is about a woman with a very sad life and she's looking for a way to make money. This is such a bad movie. I can't believe I watched this till the end. It is absolutely not a comedy and I don't know why it's written in its description. It's very sad and it's not exciting at all. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

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• Contains spoilers -What a hidden gem

  mtjohnson-610012017-09-29

  The movie is about Sherry, a sex addict, bar star who has finally decided to start thinking about her future. Sherry while quirky her life is a wreck, she lives out of a cheap motel, sells makeup door to door, seeks out random one night stands at her local bar and left her daughter to be raised by her sister. Despite what her life has been she has decided to turn it around and developed a dream but lacks the way to fund it. That is, until an unexpected stranger gets in to her car. Without giving to much of the movie away this is where I straddled the fence with where the plot evolved. It was difficult to grasp that a woman in this situation would respond this way but then I realized Sherry is a sex addict. It's worth the watch for something different.

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