‘I’ll Show You Mine’ Review: Couch Trip

“I’ll Show You Mine” teases viewers with its story of a charged, prickly and flirtatious interview between a best-selling writer, Priya (Poorna Jagannathan), and a former mannequin, Nic (Casey Thomas Brown), who’s the topic and a co-writer of a brand new ebook. He’s additionally Priya’s nephew by marriage.

The method that the director Megan Griffiths presents Priya’s pre-interview primping gives the look that Priya is getting ready for a date. This is one in every of many feints that may maintain us guessing about what might occur between the 2. And, by potent silences throughout their conversations about intercourse and trauma, the movie nudges us towards ideas about what might need occurred between them years earlier, too.

Married with children, Nic was as soon as a younger, gender-defying mannequin who strutted his stuff lengthy earlier than nonbinary identities had been widely known. He nonetheless casually defaults to coy-boy appeal. Priya is fascinated by, and mistrustful of, what she sees as his ease with intercourse and gender. Her first ebook was titled “The Abusive Patriarch(y): A Cultural Autobiography.” And the shadow of unhealthy dads — Priya’s but additionally Nic’s — hold over them as they start buying and selling histories in her front room.

The director breaks up Priya and Nic’s sofa classes with animated flashbacks, cheekily vivid illustrations and chapter headings. Even so, the film (written by Tiffany Louquet, Elizabeth Searle and David Shields) is a decidedly talky two-hander. It’s a superb factor that Jagannathan and Brown have coaching within the theater: They imbue Priya and Nic’s densely verbal jousts, dodges and truths with compelling chiaroscuro hues.

I’ll Show You Mine
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters and out there to lease or purchase on most main platforms.