Who said growing up was easy? Who even knows if we ever really grow up or become better at hiding that we are adults? Cooper Raiff, the immensely gifted young writer and director, might as well know a thing or two about this dilemma. He is back in familiar territory after S*ithouse and Cha Cha Real Smooth with his new show Hal & Harper. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, this is an amiable and moving coming-of-age drama that is also very, very sad. It is also Raiff’s most ambitious work, emotionally mature and formally daring in equal parts. (Also read: Sundance Film Festival programmer Sudeep Sharma: ‘We try to approach our selection process with curiosity and wonder’)
The premise
Cooper stars as Hal, who we meet right off at a micro-college party of sorts, where he hooks up with a girl. How he deals with his feelings for the girl the morning after establishes his communication issues right away. In parallel, we also meet Harper (Lili Reinhart), who must recalibrate her relationship with her longtime girlfriend Jesse (Alyah Chanelle Scott). Jesse is visiting her after a while, but she does not know (yet) that Harper is also growing feelings for her coworker, Audrey (Addison Timlin).
For as quickly as Cooper Raiff’s editing cuts through the scenes, marching along with Doug Emmett’s steady camerawork, there is an immediate connection between these two siblings, who seem to be stuck in a loop of codependency from the set go. Soon we will meet their dad (Mark Ruffalo), and learn, in intermittent flashbacks, that the two kids had to grow up fast and mostly, by themselves, after the death of their mother. Their dad, who is now in a live-in relationship with his pregnant girlfriend, Kate (Betty Gilpin), has decided to sell their childhood home.
Hal & Harper is essentially about these siblings trying their best at the present. They can be selfish, gruelling, extremely rude and suffocating at times, but at the end of the day, Hal and Harper realize that they only have each other. Cooper, who has such a gift for writing dialogue, instills the early episodes with a keenness to know more about these people and what they are unable to express. The short scenes interconnecting Hal and Harper are tremendous; their desperation, anxieties, and fears so palpable. With Ruffalo’s character, who is in depression, Cooper’s handling is careful and emotionally agile. There’s a fascinating sequence where the father loses it during a visit to their empty home up for sale and breaks a wall. The hole in it traverses, observes their lives a decade ago to witness where they were, and returns to the emptiness of the present.
Adults cosplay as kids
An interesting creative choice is also placing the adult siblings in place of the kids when they were in school. So we have Cooper and Lili trying to survive primary school amid a bunch of other kids and trying their best to make few friends. This narrative gag runs a bit too long, and often forces the narrative momentum to slow down. As earnest as the leads are in these scenes, the repetitive flashbacks of them as kids does end up becoming a little too indulgent at places.
These kids grew up so fast, Harper more so than Hal. With their dad so far away and locked in his own despair, both these siblings had each other to fall back upon. That sort of emotional support knows no marker. As Harper, Lili is able to balance the emotional weight of these scenes wonderfully. The actor gives a complex, open-hearted performance, which works in harmony with the carefree, child-like wonder that Hal still possesses. Lili and Cooper’s rapport is a true marvel. Mark Ruffalo is perfectly cast as the father who does not yet know all the answers to being a parent and a husband at once.
Hal & Harper is further proof of Cooper’s talent as a writer and director of telling stories of people of this generation. These characters feel so close to people we know and sometimes become so real in their temperamental highs and lows. Their interiority is never underlined or stated out loud. Cooper allows them to be ugly, insipid and gregarious. He wants them to figure themselves out in their own time. Sometimes, that is everything to ask for.
Santanu Das is covering Sundance Film Festival 2025 as part of the accredited press.