From there, we follow Allie throughout the day as she juggles appointments, medications, FaceTime calls from her mother, breakups with Tinder dates, parking disasters, and picking up her brother (David Brown), who rides along with her for a while until it’s too much to bear. While all this is happening, we see countless notifications from her phone spring up on-screen, giving her (and us) calendar notifications, medication alerts, innocuous Instagram messages, discount offers, text messages from her sister (oh, right, she’s waiting at the airport) and more confusing messages from her boss.
I would advise maybe watching this a couple of times to catch all of these notifications, which come in fast and furious. I have seen the film many times (I programmed it for this year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival), and every time I view it, I notice something I didn’t notice before (this last time was the first time I noticed she confused “Petco” and ‘PetSmart”). Some people have found it overwhelming, and I think that’s the point. “Flail” moves quickly, and maybe it’s good to know that the viewer should not try to take in every text message, because Allie sure as hell isn’t keeping track. This is a day many of us have had, one where we try to do too many favors at once, prioritizing nothing and constantly rushing the clock to get it all done.
Of course, a movie like this needs some catharsis and “Flail” arrives at its most logical conclusion. There is only so much a person in Allie’s position can take. Levitan, who gives a pitch-perfect performance here, gets to have a very funny final confrontation that I find myself mouthing along to every time I watch it. “Flail” got big laughs when it played in Chicago last spring; it might be what someone needs at the end of a long, hard day of being overworked and undervalued. It’s a workplace comedy that is all over the place, both by design and intention. If you feel like “this is me every day,” maybe start by, you know, turning “off notifications.”