So did you know there is a genre of film called “mumblecore”? According to Wikipedia it is “primarily characterized by ultra-low budget production (often employing digital video cameras), focus on personal relationships between twenty-somethings, improvised scripts, and non-professional actors.” And so, given that Hannah Takes the Stairs is a mumblecore film, you would be 100% correct to believe that all these things apply here.

This is basically the story of a girl/woman who breaks up with her boyfriend because she is vaguely dissatisfied and then proceeds through a couple of other relationships in the same aimless and driftless way. There’s no real story arc to speak of; it’s your kind of prototypical slice-of-life thing, right. And so along with the shambolic plot, there are aimless scenes that kind of piggle around with people just talking in sort of random and aimless ways, including more than a few scenes where people get all drunk and emo.

I can easily see where this sort of thing would irritate the fuck out of you, if you encountered it in the wrong mood; and I don’t think I want to sit down and watch a whole bunch of mumblecore films, but… there’s something sort of refreshing about the relentless mundanity of it, you know? It has an almost documentary feeling to it. (Including the random, largely non-erotic, nudity – people are just naked in the film whenever they might happen to be naked in real life, without any apparent dramatic intent or anything to it.)

Sort of recommended, if you’re in the mood for this sort of thing; heavily, heavily disrecommended if you are not.