Movie Review: 'Language Lessons' Starring Mark Duplass and Natalie Morales

When I was 30 years old, my grandmother died. On the last day of her life, I was there with her. It was just her and I and she was in and out of consciousness. She became very ill and I panicked. I had no idea what to do so I called a competent person, my sister in-law Jennifer. She’s incredible, she was so kind to me, especially that day. I had to wait there for her to arrive and I did what I could to be comforting to my grandmother.

Even in the state she was in, she could tell how distressed I was. When my sister in-law arrived along with an at home nurse, they told me I could go and as I was leaving, my grandmother said “Is Sean okay?” I was stunned. I went to my car and I cried harder than I have ever cried. I know she wasn’t in a particularly rational state but the notion that, with as much pain as she was feeling and how she knew the end was near, she was still able to ask about me?

But that was her, she was always incredibly selfless. Cranky as the day is long but selfless, self-sacrificing and compassionate. Until that moment, I never understood compassion. I had always thought to myself that we are all on our own and you have to look out for number 1, you can’t rely on others. And my grandmother broke me. Until that point in my life, I was deeply selfish and I really only ever considered my feelings as important.

This is a very long way of getting to a movie review of a movie called Language Lessons, a pandemic era story of selflessness, grief and loving friendship. Watching characters played by Natalie Morales and Mark Duplass demonstrate selflessness and compassion brought me back to this formative moment in my life in the best way possible. As hard as that day was and how difficult that loss was, I learned something so important, it’s impossible not to care about other people.

Language Lessons stars Mark Duplass as Adam, a man whose husband, Will, has bought him two years worth of Spanish lessons. Speaking Spanish is something Will mostly knows how to do but he’s rusty. He grew up in a nomadic family and carried on a rather nomadic lifestyle until he met Will and his Spanish was a casualty of time. Now, thanks to Will, he will have weekly lessons with Carino, pronounced Carin-yo, (Natalie Morales), who will help him hone his former skill.

Their teacher-student dynamic takes a remarkable turn shortly after they begin and I want you to see for yourself where that goes. Needless to say, it involves them becoming friends and the myriad twists and turns of a friendship that begins in the strangest and saddest ways possible and becomes something incredibly important to them both. You won’t be able to predict the many twists and turns and all of it, the entirety of it, is accomplished via conversations.

Natalie Morales co-wrote and directed Language Lessons which takes place entirely over Zoom. This was a natural outgrowth of the pandemic and the desire to still create amid the lockdown and the constraints of the format are part of what make the work here so brilliant. For Language Lessons to work, she and Mark Duplass had to be incredibly in sync and her ability to balance directing and bringing these remarkable moments of intimacy and friendship to life, is a greater challenge than she will likely ever get credit for.

Adam lives in Oakland and Carino lives in Costa Rica, their lessons are conducted over video chat and they converse outside of lessons via video messages. Many of these conversations are improvised, based off of a script that Mark Duplass and Natalie Morales co-wrote together. These conversations and mini-monologues are incredible, they’re filled with warmth, a lived in humor, and genuine human connection.

They are also filled with anger, fear, resentment, recriminations, the gamut of the human experience. The chemistry between these two actors is remarkable and their ability to appear entirely in the moment is extraordinary. I quickly forgot about Mark and Natalie and became engrossed in Adam and Carino. There are moments of such beauty, honesty and sorrow in Language Lessons that I can say in all honesty, this movie will linger with me forever.

There are only two people in this entire movie and that’s all that is needed. Duplass and Morales are brilliant and I was hanging on every word of every conversation, from funny patter to heartbreak and back again. Language Lessons, in conversation alone, is more exciting than 99% of the movies I have seen this year. That’s, of course, incredibly subjective, given the way I related to this movie, my story about my grandmother, and so on, but still, I fully believe that anyone who gives Language Lessons a chance may be just as moved and inspired by this remarkable and lovely movie.

Wrapping up, open your heart, care about other people, let them in, not everyone, the ones who deserve it. It can be hard to find those people, but when you do, don’t let go. Being compassionate, caring about others, being selfless, is not easy but as it is for Adam and Carino, it can be for you as well. My grandmother’s compassion opened my heart and because of her, because of that moment on her last day on Earth, I have found a whole world because of compassion, because I was willing to live up to the example she set.

The remarkable compassion that Mark and Carino give to each other is so beautifully demonstrated in Language Lessons and it reinforced within me the lesson from my grandmother, even in the darkest of times, giving of yourself to others is sometimes all that you can do. Without knowing it, my grandmother changed my life that day, she made me a better person. Without knowing what they were getting into, Mark and Carino change each other's lives simply by being compassionate and offering care, and it is a beautiful, difficult, and impressively moving journey to see them realize that.

Language Lessons will be in limited release and available for on-demand rental on September 10th. It’s one of the best movies of 2021.