Folks, I just saw the most compelling comedy I’ve seen this year. Jay Duplass returns to his passion for directing sans brother to make a very unusual independent film.

Solo and armed with a strong bullshit detector he takes a snowblower to the Hollywood naysayers by helming The Baltimorons, 2025, with a gut wrenching art-mimicking-life storyline: menopause & suicide.

Have no fear, I won’t spoil the surprise with any hints about the plot but suffice it to say the hero of the movie actually lived out some of the darker edges of the storyline.

After the screening Michael Strassner revealed the life event that Mr. Duplass said compelled the tone of the documentary tone of the film’s ultimate consummation.

Of course, we’re served a beautifully crafted version of that truth but it’s one that gets many a laugh…and, for me, a salty rain of tears streaming down my face.

In addition, as an older woman I was thrilled to see a May-December relationship front and center on the screen; portrayed by the fiery Liz Larsen, Didi is the raw, midlife momentum along which 30-something Cliff (Strassner) clings in a moment to moment juggernaut of taboo-bending passionate realism.

Duplass’ choice of a doco tone works to accentuate the cultural tension the strange starring pair shred with intense creative chemistry.

As an example of the film’s after glow, after the screening a woman of a certain age approached me in the long bathroom line with a serious face and surprising confession. She said she’d always felt afraid to date a younger man.

However, after watching The Baltimorons, she felt opened up to the potential dating a younger man might bring to her love life in the future. (I couldn’t help imparting my own hearty agreement having entered the MILF/ Cougar realm more than a decade ago.)

Suffice it to say The Baltimorons walks a fine line between dropping into psychological tragedy and tickle your funny bone-ish set ups. Astride those boundaries many of us in the audience today left with a renewed relish of the unconventional.

Ultimately the Baltimore produced story yields ups and downs that rubs the heart and loins just the way comedy can do when it’s at its cathartic best.

The mix of screenplay and improv makes you glad Duplass outran the dark forces standing at the gates of Hollywood movie production these days; by tapping into the quantum field of Maryland low-budget potential he and his talented cast and local crew found a communally based way to work.

Alchemically procuring the universal dark matter of aging and new love underneath human coupling, cringeworthy vulnerability digs into the psyche of the unwitting viewer.

Maybe the sentiment toward the effectiveness of the microcosmic view will soon return to Los Angeles’ filmmaking scene as Duplass hopes…

-a.h.