FOR WORSE (SXSW 2025) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
Longtime performer Amy Landecker pulls off a hat trick with For Worse, a snappy romantic comedy about a divorced woman finding her feet in the Los Angeles dating scene.
Landecker (The Handmaid’s Tale, Transparent) makes her feature writing and directing debut with For Worse, which premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival. Fresh starts can be fraught with embarrassment but ripe for comedy as this film shows from the opening moments, as grainy wedding footage segues into a cake in the face and then a mediation for a midlife divorce between Lauren (Landecker) and Chase (Paul Adelstein, Agatha All Along). The mediator sipping from a “Girl Dad” mug while congratulating them on dissolving their “beautiful, failed marriage” is but a taste of the humor ahead.
Lauren and Chase share a young daughter, who draws up a list of dealbreakers for any of her mom’s new love interests. Lauren thinks romance is off the table, but when she takes an acting class to get her mind off Chase and his much-younger influencer girlfriend (Angelique Cabral, Clean Slate), she finds a warm artistic group—and a hot twentysomething potential love interest, Sean (Nico Hiraga, Sweethearts). Her salty best friend (Missi Pyle, The Sex Lives of College Girls) tells her not to worry about his age or his ballcap wall decor and enjoy the ride.
For Worse is enjoyable enough as Lauren tests out her newfound freedom, with rapid patter among the characters that feels fresh and natural. Landecker and Hiraga have amiable chemistry, even when something interrupts their foreplay. Whether in bed or in acting class, Hiraga plays Sean as genuinely chill, reassuring Lauren through her embarrassment in moments that don’t poke fun at her but make her relatable and endearing.
The script mines the acting class for several laughs, with the acrid instructor (Gaby Hoffmann, Zero Day) prepping the students for commercials by assigning weighty dramatic bits. (If you can act the hell out of a breakup, you can pull off pitching menopause products, she reasons.)
The story fully finds its groove when Lauren and Sean attend the wedding of a classmate, Maria (Kiersey Clemons, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters). Her parents also are divorced—amiably, but her father (Bradley Whitford, Parish), finds her stepdad as grating as he is friendly. Whitford, Landecker’s husband, is as funny with pratfalls as his barbed delivery.
Lauren hits it off with the bride’s brother (Spencer Stevenson, Rosaline) and tries to keep up with the younger bridesmaids. Meanwhile, she wonders if another guest more her age (Ken Marino, Solar Opposites) might be a better match.
Things get worse for Lauren before the wedding weekend wraps, but For Worse likes her too much to keep her down for long. It’s a quirky journey about unexpected connections, reinvention, and self-acceptance with a woman who learns to land on her feet, even if she trips and falls along the way.
