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• Sundance 2017 (Line up)

Year of production : 2016

Director(s) : Michelle MORGAN

Annette might be judgmental, critical, and a total perfectionist—but only of the most charming variety. When she suddenly perceives that her relationship with her boyfriend, Elliot, is inferior to all the happy coupledom she sees among her friends, she decides they need to break up. Launched into the LA dating scene, where film industry jobs, old school bars, and elitist consumerism are the norm, Annette begins to realize that maybe meeting some cool new guy isn’t going to lead her to personal fulfillment. When unsettling revelations about her friends and their “ideal” relationships surface, Annette is further forced to reexamine her theories.

In this aesthetically pleasing world created by writer/director/lead actor Michelle Morgan (whose short film K.I.T. played at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival), L.A. Times is a contemporary comedy of manners where West Coast meets Whit Stillman, and sweetness rules over cynicism. Morgan delights in language—witticisms and pithy observations roll off the tongues of her endearing characters who, despite their seemingly perfectly curated lives, manage to complicate things in the most human of ways.