At a dinner party she hosts with her psychoanalyst husband, Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), Alma is no less in her element. Resplendent in Veronica Lake curls, and softly lighted against handsome wood panelling, she draws the attention of everyone in sight. The flirty blowhard with the goatee is a younger philosophy professor, Hank (Andrew Garfield), who signals their years of friendship (and maybe more) by propping his legs up against her on the couch. Seated nearby is Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a doctoral candidate rumored to be brilliant, though all we can discern, watching her fidget, is an anxious yearning for Alma’s approval (and maybe more). The party chatter is thick with high-flown intellectualism, cross-generational sniping, and intra-department rivalry, none of which anyone could or should mistake for plausible academia-speak. The screenwriter, Nora Garrett, has achieved an amusingly florid Hollywood simulacrum—one that tilts into knowing parody—of an intensely self-regarding world. The more irritating the characters get, the more compelling the movie becomes.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter