'Next Life' Review: Emilia Clarke Navigates Parallel Lives and Sliding Doors in Drake Doremus's Wishy-Washy Romance [C+] Tribeca Festival
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Drake Doremus broke through in 2011 with his fourth feature, Like Crazy, a Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner that arrived at a moment when indie romance still felt capable of shaping the broader cultural conversation. In the 15 years since, he has directed another half-dozen features, though none has cast quite the same shadow. His latest, Next Life, premiering in Tribeca Festival’s Spotlight Narrative section, finds him returning once more to matters of the heart. Pleasant and eminently watchable, it nevertheless carries the unmistakable scent of something secondhand. Anyone who survived the 1990s MiraBrit boom — when Harvey Weinstein stuffed American arthouses with a steady stream of mostly middling British imports — will recognize the DNA almost immediately.
