Flesh is a beautiful, repulsive miracle. We crave its touch on others and fear it on ourselves, all its bruises and wrinkles and, underneath, the strain of muscles pulling at bone. And it’s flesh that Michael Shanks exploits for all its possibilities in his feature debut, the body horror Together, in which a craving for intimacy becomes a nightmare for a couple teetering on the brink of either marriage or mutually assured destruction. It’s natural to want to feel closer to someone. But how close, exactly, is too close?
The threat of co-dependency is turned into a dark joke in Shanks’s hands, as Millie (Alison Brie) and Tim (Dave Franco) move out to the sticks so she can start a new job as a teacher, and he can quietly resent his stagnated music career. They still say, “I love you,” but they’ve stopped having sex and are starting to recognise that “I love you” might have quietly transformed into “I’ve become used to you.” An attempt at a spontaneous, whimsical proposal backfires so dramatically that you have to admire them for not immediately packing their bags and splitting on the spot.
