Victor Levin didn't have a lot of time to talk. A director and writer for the Starz show "Survivor's Remorse," which is set in Atlanta and films here, he was leaving soon to scout locations.
“We’re starting to feel at home,” he said. “People really roll out the red carpet here. There’s a lot of acting talent. It’s very convenient. Traffic is manageable.”
Wait, what? Manageable?
“I’m coming from L.A.,” he mused.
His charming big-screen project, “5 to 7,” features characters whose relationships are also sort of manageable. Like zipping down the Connector at 5 p.m. on a Friday, things sound a bit too good to be true.
Brian (Anton Yelchin) is a struggling young writer papering his Manhattan apartment walls with magazine rejection letters when he stumbles past the glamorous Arielle (Bérénice Marlohe) on a smoke break. He's smitten with the worldly Frenchwoman, she's intrigued by the cuddly American and her husband is totally cool with it.
Wait, what? Husband?
“I was traveling in France in the 1980s with my girlfriend at the time and we stayed with friends and the husband, wife, mistress and boyfriend were all there,” Levin said. “I’m a suburban middle-class kid. This was not on the menu. They were happy. They were very elegant about it, but there really were strict rules. There was a complicated but effortless choreography to it.”
He put a pin in that, as social media mavens might say.
“While it wasn’t anything I could consider in my own life, it felt like a good starting-off point for a story,” Levin said.
The movie opened last week in limited release. You might have to catch it on a streaming service like Netflix, which is just as well. You'll want to push "pause" a lot, especially when the cameos start gliding onto the screen. New Yorker editor David Remnick, celebrity restaurateur Daniel Boulud, New York Philharmonic director Alan Gilbert and civil rights leader Julian Bond are among the personages playing themselves.
"I had read enough Tom Wolfe books to know that if you're going to do a New York story, you've got to have a dinner party scene with famous people," Levin said.
A little bit “Casablanca,” a little bit “The Graduate,” a little bit “An Affair to Remember” and a little bit “The Age of Innocence,” the movie is also stuffed like a goose-down pillow with memorable lines you may want to scribble down.
“If you want to be a writer, you can’t have a mediocre life.”
“The world really can surprise you with its grace.”
“As little as you want to write when you’re happy, that’s how much you have to write when you’re miserable.”
And this gem: “Your favorite story, whatever it may be, was written for one reader.”
