South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival – March 2020. A lifetime ago. Exactly one year ago. The month most of us stateside saw the world as we know it crash into millions of little pieces, littered amongst paper masks and rubber gloves. The day before lockdown hits type-A personality Leah (Ali Vingiano), not knowing what lies ahead, finally breaks up with semi-deadbeat struggling actor boyfriend Nick (Ben Coleman). What ensues is the messiest, most petty breakup – all in the midst of a lockdown, Covid scares, job losses, and the overall “wtf-ness” of 2020.

I almost feel like this film should come with a trigger warning, especially for Angelenos. You may laugh, and to be fair I laughed too, but The End of Us dredged up some long forgotten trauma from those early lockdown days. Leah desperately begs Nick to take off his clothes after he returns from the grocery store, not knowing yet if the virus travels on clothes. Nick adjusts to constantly changing protocols – no masks, masks always, no mask when exercising, double masks… a process most people still fight with. They try the “bettering” activities we all tried in the early days – baking bread, making masks by hand. And in the middle of all of this, they try to figure out what they are, what they’re doing, and how they’re going to get out of this mess. Leah turns 30. Nick desperately takes on a delivery job. Leah meets a boy. Boy gets Covid. You know, normal things that we all went through in the first sixty days of quar. Yes, I said sixty days. Be prepared for gut busting laughter as the lockdown day count interstitials remind us of that whole “two week” promise/lie we all bought in to.

An admirable aspect of The End of Us is that neither party is painted as a hero. Both are flawed, both are lovable, both make you crazy. I repeatedly found myself thinking, “God, imagine being stuck in quarantine with THAT…” about both Leah and Nick. The empathy and sympathy I felt for both of them was only overridden by my insane annoyance at their petty, childish behavior as they shuffled through what hopefully most of us only had nightmares about. (If this movie is in any way representative of how you spent time in 2020, my deepest condolences.)

A charming, funny, fun time capsule – perhaps of things we don’t want to remember, but definitely of things and events we should never forget. A message of survival – a message of hope in our deepest darkness. A message of humor. A reminder that we WILL survive. All in all, The End of Us wraps up the biggest message of the events of 2020 – We can never go back to normal – and why would we, when normal never worked to begin with? May we all take our sourdough bread, our plant collection, and our newfound video meeting skills into our future – hopefully with a little less hand sanitizer and a lot more hope.

The End of Us reviewed as part of our South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival coverage.

9 out of 10 Paper Masks