Directed by: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore
Rated R, 90 minutes
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Scarlett Johansson star in “Don Jon.” (Courtesy photo)
In 2011, Steve McQueen released “Shame,” the notoriously blunt exploration of a tragic addiction to sex. “Don Jon,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial and writing debut, is that same movie, but done as a comedy and made accessible to the average person. I say this not to pick on “Shame,” but more to point out that Gordon-Levitt has loudly taken the director’s chair and clearly has intentions to turn stories we thought we knew on their heads.
In “Don Jon,” we meet cocky New Jersey bachelor Jon (Gordon-Levitt, “Looper”), who leads a charmed life. He’s wealthy, he’s in great shape, he loves his family, he goes to church, he keeps his apartment perfectly clean, and he regularly brings home the most attractive women from the local nightclub. He’s also shamelessly addicted to internet porn, against which he compares all his real-life sexual experiences. And for Jon, the porn always wins.
Then he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson, “Lost in Translation”), the perfect woman. She’s beautiful—”the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says—she’s sly, and there’s a mystique about her that makes Jon willing to do anything for her. Except give up his porn, of course.
He tries, to be sure, but even with someone as beautiful as Barbara, Jon knows he can’t replicate the ethereal pleasure that porn gives him. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Barbara doesn’t want to hear. When things eventually come to a head, Jon finds advice and solace from an unlikely source, an older woman he meets at a night class, Esther (Julianne Moore, “The Kids Are All Right”). Esther, unlike anyone Jon’s met before, understands his porn addiction and wants to help him.
What could have easily been a heavy-handed rumination on sex and relationships is instead a fast-paced barrage of a movie, taking exuberantly wild stances and defending them lewdly. It’s indicative of Gordon-Levitt’s attitude, a gleefully youthful resistance to boring old traditions like exposition and description. Scenes may not always follow from the ones before them, but there’s so much energy and momentum behind every cut and sound effect that we tumble from one plot point to the next. It’s refreshing, a compelling style that would be a nuisance if the film were any longer than it is.
For all its lightning-fast pacing, though, “Don Jon” contains a slew of performances that are satisfying and naturalistic. At the forefront are, without a doubt, the women in the movie. Julianne Moore is instantly likable for her quirkiness, and she carries with her a sense of tragedy that keeps us guessing. She serves as a perfect foil to Johansson’s Barbara, the so-called “perfect” woman who, at second glance, actually has something quite sinister about her.
In fact, even though it’s about a man’s man who watches porn, this is definitely a movie about women. Gordon-Levitt’s script, clearly taking cues from the old tale of Don Juan, presents the classic character of the incorrigible ladies’ man with an added dose of wisdom that comes straight from the women in his life. In doing so, he tells a layered story whose outer layers are offensive and outlandish and whose inner layers are much more mature.
There’s still a sense of over-simplification to the movie, though. Portrayals of Jon’s devotion to the different areas of his life, for example, are confined to showing him doing one thing eagerly. He loves his church, but the only thing we see him do there is go to confessional; he loves his family (wonderfully portrayed by Tony Danza, Glenne Headly, and Brie Larson), but their only scenes are at the dinner table. Not that this simplicity is a bad thing, but there’s a theatricality to Jon’s life and, as such, to Gordon-Levitt’s performance. The women shatter that theatrical cleanliness, and it’s nothing if not satisfying.
That’s not to say Jon ever sees just how ridiculous his life is. He learns his lesson, certainly, but at the end he still has a long way to go. Gordon-Levitt cleverly—maybe smugly—leaves us wondering where the characters will go, as if the end of “Don Jon” is more where Jon feels like stopping than where the story ends. As a writer and a director, Gordon-Levitt already seems to know just how to play to the audience, and that skill will serve him well.
Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania.
