Heartland: It Happened One Weekend

An eclectic and thoroughly engaging mix of old and new cinema styles about best friends contemplating romance. Think Woody Allen's "Manhattan" by way of modern Indianapolis.

For Heartland Film Festival showtimes and tickets, click here.

“Loneliness can be super comfortable.”

Imagine if Woody Allen was making 1979’s “Manhattan” in Indianapolis, but with more modern sensibilities and themes — not about a middle-aged man dating a teenager (ick) but two longtime best friends who dance around the notion of turning their relationship into a romance.

That’s Zac Cooper’s “It Happened One Weekend,” an eclectic and thoroughly engaging romantic dramedy that he wrote, directed, edited and stars in along with Merry Moore.

Shot in glorious black-and-white, it’s set against the backdrop of Downtown Indianapolis and surround communities just outside the Loop, notably Fountain Square. You’ll see the inside and outside of spots like Mayfair Taproom, all along Mass Ave., Monument Circle, Canal Walk and some more out-of-the-way spots.

This movie is practically a postcard for Indianapolis, making it look like the cool but unpretentious Midwest enclave for striving hipsters that people like to talk about.

Cooper and Moore play Aaron and Julia, respectively, a pair of bohemian young adults who are still struggling to establish their careers, their identities and especially their approach to relationships.

She is a photographer who yearns to make art about the oppression of women, but instead takes wedding and engagement pictures. He calls himself a screenwriter, and has a few tiny indies made, but makes his bucks from writing advertising copy for credit card companies.

They’ve been friends for some time now, even growing into besties as their various romantic entanglements come and go. They met on a date but both professed to not wanting anything serious at the time, so it grew into something else. It seems clear from the way Aaron stares at Julia when she’s not looking that he’s got other lingering ideas.

Cooper sort of resembles a more petite version of Jake Gyllenhaal, with side-swept hair and a mustache that can only be worn ironically. He gives Aaron a gentle, slightly swishy beta-male charisma, the sort of guy who’s nonthreatening and a good listener. Julia has an ‘80s-style bob haircut and isn’t fussy, wearing the same off-white shorts and Birkenstocks almost the entire movie. She’s a tough, modern woman who knows who she is, even if she doesn’t always believe it herself.

As you can guess from the title, it takes place over a single weekend that starts with them getting dumped by their current beaus, Chris (Wilson Mack) for Julia and Abby (Hannah Roeschlein). Aaron turns 30 on Sunday and was supposed to go on a trip with Abby, but she cornered him and got him to admit he doesn’t see their relationship going anywhere. So Julia is determined to give him good company.

There really isn’t much that happens plot-wise, just an ongoing conversation that dips into subjects both silly and serious — shades of “My Dinner with Andre.” At a party hosted by Julia’s friend Alice (Jessie Ein), the question is repeatedly poised of why they aren’t a couple since they seem a natural fit together. This reawakens Aaron’s dormant feelings for her, and perhaps plants a seed in Julia’s head that wasn’t there.

I loved spending time with these people. Even though they’re decades younger and in that mode of people that age where they take the gobs of free time they have for granted, they’re immensely relatable and likeable. They’re authentically real Hoosiers, flawed and full of hope and doubts, thinking they know it all one minute and hopelessly lost in their own misery the next.

Julia and Aaron do seem like they are made for each other. But being emotionally simpatico is just one of the ingredients necessary for lasting romance — can they find the other pieces of the puzzle and snap them together, all in one 72-hour period?

We’ll see. “It Happened One Weekend” is a smart and funny treatise on friendship and love, and all the wayward places in between.