Over the last three years we’ve seen any number of movies filmed during the pandemic that were ABOUT the pandemic, from the Katie Holmes romance drama “7 Days” to the couple-in-crisis domestic tale “Together” with James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan to Judd Apatow’s ambitious but not-good disaster movie spoof “The Bubble,” among many others. I’m not sure there’s much more of an appetite for these inward-looking, COVID-set films anymore, but if you’re up for it, writer-director Cecilia Miniucchi’s “Life Upside Down” is a slight but wryly effective, upper-class social satire with winning performances from a cast including Bob Odenkirk, Radha Mitchell and Danny Huston.
Filmed remotely (save for the first and last scenes) in Los Angeles using computers, iPads and iPhones during the lockdown in May and June of 2020, “Life Upside Down” feels like the kind of pandemic movie Woody Allen would have made, what with its sharp dialogue and its focus on artists and writers and college teachers and their romantic entanglements. All of the main characters are together in the opening scene, which takes place at a gallery showing by Odenkirk’s Jonathan, a slightly smarmy type in a stupid hat. (Jonathan could be the next iteration of Saul Goodman, had Saul/Gene escaped and reinvented himself in Los Angeles.) Also in attendance: Jonathan’s wife, Sue (Jeanie Lim); his mistress, Clarissa (Radha Mitchell); the wealthy and successful author Paul (Danny Huston), who is Clarissa’s longtime friend and mentor, and Paul’s younger wife, Rita (Rosie Fellner).
