Los Angeles-based writer, director, and actor Claudia Restrepo stars in Peak Season, out now. Though they describe it as a romantic comedy, this story had me reliving the inner turmoil that develops when you take stock of your life and find it unrecognizable.
Breathtaking scenes of Jackson Hole serve as a backdrop for a slow-burn film about a blossoming friendship between two people whose lives couldn’t be more different. Peak Season opens with Loren, played by a rugged and bearded Derrick Joseph DeBlasis. He’s a young man who lives in his car and spends his days going from gig to gig, including showing city slickers how to fish. I could smell his car through my screen.
Restrepo plays Amy, who we don’t meet until several scenes into the story. She and her workaholic fiance Max (Ben Coleman) are getting settled into an ultra-chic mansion for the summer. The pair are in Jackson Hole for a change of scenery from city life, staying in a house that belongs to Max’s family. The romantic getaway is cut short when Max has to handle a work emergency, forcing Amy to head solo to the fishing lessons a friend had gifted the couple.
This is where city-gal Amy meets country boy Loren. Their interactions are awkward at first, the same way any new acquaintance might start. But by the end of the hours-long fishing lessons, the two are cracking jokes and slipping into an easy comfort with one another. Amy’s intrigued by Loren’s way of life and how distinct it is from the formulaic college-career-relationship-marriage track that she and Max are on. The intrigue is mutual as Loren googles Amy, landing on her Columbia Business School alumni profile.
Max’s work emergency eventually pulls him back to New York City for a few days and he convinces Amy, who is in between jobs, to use the time to work on wedding planning while soaking in more of the Jackson Hole landscapes. While exploring a country bar on her own, Amy bumps into Loren and our two protagonists meet again, this time all washed up. They embark on a days-long adventure as Loren shows Amy his world between bonfires, hikes, and too many drinks.
This is where the film’s point of view pivots firmly into Amy’s perspective. The limited interactions we see between Amy and Max show a couple that might be moving toward marriage as a matter of sequence, not love. Amy seems lonely in her relationship. The more Amy and Loren’s bond develops, the more evident it is that she’s not certain that her life is moving in the right direction. The allure of majestic mountains and lakes and Loren’s vagabond lifestyle disrupt Amy’s world of business school and wedding registries.
The movie’s deliberately slow pace adds to the immersive sense I felt as I watched these two characters incrementally blur the lines between friendship and romance. I fell in love with Jackson Hole (and Loren?) right along with Amy. I looked back to points in my life when I questioned, “Is this all there is? Is this what I want?”
Many of us have vacationed in dreamy places and fantasized about leaving our conventional lives behind, trading offices for hammocks. For Amy, the fantasy includes possibly trading her rich-bro fiancee for a cowboy who lives in a car.
And the tension in this story is really within Amy as she battles what she is starting to feel and what it would mean to uproot her life. I found this friction to be far too real to call this movie a romantic comedy. What makes Peak Season so compelling is its detraction from rom-com tropes. Watching it, I got enveloped in the complex feelings of a nascent relationship that forces our heroine, and therefore us, to confront the reality that constrains her.
