Poetic License

In films, the presence of three is inherently fodder. The arrangement can be disruptive, but it is mainly used by makers to arrive at familiar resolutions. In her wonderfully assured directorial debut, Poetic License, Maude Apatow flips the script. She takes three people, resists settling for sweeping endings and shakes things up for fun. It is a lovely detour that is consistently rewarding. Ari (Cooper Hoffman) and Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman) have been friends for a while. As students, their lives have been mostly spent on campus. Things, however, are about to change. The erudite Sam has his eyes set on a finance job, while Ari, the rich young boy prone to wearing LED face masks at leisure, is still trying to figure things out. A poetry class together becomes their latest way of hanging out. But when Liz (Leslie Mann) sits with them in class, their attention to each other wavers a little. There is only one problem: Liz is a married woman with a daughter. Her professor-husband’s new job at the university brings her to a quiet town from Chicago, as she sits with them in a poetry class to audit.