Matt and Mara review – freewheeling Canadian romance

Canadian director Kazik Radwanski reunites with Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson, the stars of his impressive if supremely uncomfortable character study Anne at 13,000ft. Matt and Mara takes a similarly loose and free-wheeling approach that owes a debt to the angular naturalism of the early 2000s mumblecore movement.

The film examines the charged friendship between poetry professor Mara (Campbell) and novelist Matt (Johnson), the college buddy whose unexpected return threatens to tip her life and marriage off balance. Intimate, impulsive, irresponsible: the relationship between them is shaped by Matt’s charming but narcissistic character, with Mara caught in the slipstream. It’s an emotional affair teetering on the brink of full-blown infidelity. Radwanski uses restless, handheld cameras and improvisation to capture micro-moments in which not a lot happens but the implications are huge.

• In UK and Irish cinemas