Be Good Trailer (2013)

Trailer for Be Good.

Beautifully shot and superbly acted, Be Good succinctly delivers an evocative portrait of the pressures and rewards of modern parenthood. In a perfect storm of writing, performance, and direction, Todd Looby’s autobiographically-inspired tale provides a vivid glimpse at a couple being tested by shifting priorities and the compromises they have to live with. Amy Seimetz, one of Indiewire’s “Top 25 actors of 2011,” plays a mom who returns to work, leaving her struggling filmmaker hubby (Thomas Madden of Looby’s last film Lefty) in charge of their adorable baby while he tries to bang out a screenplay. The cast doesn’t act but lives their roles. Looby himself is terrific as Paul’s single buddy who tells it like it is, and Chicago-based filmmaker Joe Swanberg (director of All the Light in the Sky) and his real-life son make a wonderful cameo. But it is six-month-old baby Pearl, played by Looby’s own daughter Tessa Day, who steals the show. With plenty of wry humor, BE GOOD speaks intimately about fatherhood, dreams put on hold, the bond of mother to child, and the ever-shifting parameters for child rearing.