Celeste & Jesse Forever

Although the title is "Celeste & Jesse," the story is mostly told from Celeste's point of view. As the title suggests, this is a young relationship, perhaps started from high school or college years with a "never grow old" attitude, and perhaps it is this relationship formed in a time of their lives when the couple has barely dipped their toes into the adult world, that causes the disintegration of the marriage.  When the film begins Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) are driving home and sharing an inside joke, one apparently they have shared many times before, showing to us how attuned and comfortable they are to each other. When they arrive home though, Celeste goes into the house, while Jesse goes into a studio/garage in the back--they've already been separated yet we see they have a still amicable relationship.  She works at a marketing firm and he is some sort of graphic artist.

At first the story shows that Jesse is the one having a hard time moving on, with Celeste gently trying to encourage him to be active with his life and with women, yet also annoyed at him for not doing so. Jesse dates someone just to get it over with, then later re-meets a woman he had a one night stand with (while he was married, which Celeste claims to be okay with it). Celeste herself is not open to dating really, claiming she is emotionally healthy enough not to have to start something long-term again, but all the dates with supposedly normal men end up being a bit weird. The one normal guy she does date can see she still has some issues and suggests she take some time to work them out.  Conversely she ends up with an annoying guy at her yoga class (Chris Messina) despite her initial cynical reservations.

Jesse's one night stand, Veronica, tells him she had actually gotten pregnant by him, and he decides to make a go with her. His relationship with Celeste is still such that he shares details of his new life with her, although he does so carefully. In private, we see Celeste is more angry and less supportive that she lets on. She says to everyone that she is fine with things, but we can tell she is not. She and Jesse have a couple relapses back into a quasi romantic relationship, which confuses and slows down the process to officially divorcing.

While Jesse thinks his life is not perfect, he is open to making it work, whereas Celeste wants things to go the way she wants, or not at all.  Celeste comes to see that she is the one with the hangups, and by film's end she is trying to let go of these issues to enjoy her life, with or without a man.

The story was a step above from other romantic comedies of similar veins, or what the film most likely would be compared to--the recent "men behaving badly" type of comedies.  Andy Samberg, a name I only know from Saturday Night Live and have not really watched in anything, actually was not bad in a serious storyline. For me, his comic past was a sort of stigma which he had to overcome, which he did.  Celeste's characterization is more mature and real than those of women in other romantic dramedies, yet her character is actually the immature one in the relationship. The story does try to explore a bit of her emotional development and maturing through this breakup. From what I saw the story does not really relate why the couple broke up, but the characterizations show they are different types of people, so that may have been part of the problem.