Apparently it's getting harder to meet compatible partners these days in independent movies. Some disaster or random act must intervene. For example, grieving mother Nicole Kidman hooks up with the driver who ran down her child in Rabbit Hole, and Miranda July's slacker hits on a guy whose phone number she finds on the back of a drawing in The Future. In Mike Cahill's debut, Rhoda (Brit Marling, who also co-wrote) hits on John (William Mapother), the surviving father of the family she wiped out in a drunk-driving accident. That's a compelling enough premise, but then scientists discover a planetary double for the earth suddenly appearing in the sky, and that becomes a duplicate, underdeveloped storyline for the film. Cahill and Marling demonstrate a knack for detail and twisted psychology, and had they been satisfied with one planet this might have been a more impressive effort. They should have saved the other earth for another movie.
