Directed by Sophie Brooks | Written by Brooks and Molly Gordon | 94 min | ▲▲▲1/2  

Iris (Gordon, a Booksmart veteran) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) are off for a weekend in the New York countryside at a gorgeous farmhouse. They’re in that honeymoon phase of their relationship — he’s saying and doing all the right things, and she can’t believe how happy she is with him. They sing along to Kenny and Dolly, “Islands In The Stream,” natch.’ He goes down on her unprompted and they swim in a pond, annoying weird neighbour Steve (David Cross). Isaac makes scallops for Iris. After dinner they use some BDSM gear they find in a closet and she cuffs him to the bedframe.

After sex, Isaac admits he’s not interested in a relationship and Iris snaps. She refuses to untie him.

This is a picture that dances along a shifting tonal line, threatening to become an ultra-bleak Michael Haneke picture where people torture each other to death, but actually tilts gracefully between a cringe comedy and something else, something about the promises we make with our bodies, with our actions, and the responsibilities we have to others even in the face of our own fear.

The film also introduces us to Max (the always welcome Geraldine Viswanathan) and Kenny (John Reynolds), friends of Iris and Isaac, who inadvertently become accomplices to Iris keeping Isaac restrained. This while dream-state moments in the third act provide an unexpectedly deeper vision of what’s happening between these characters. All told, an unexpected pleasure.