‘Look Both Ways’ Review: To Be and Not to Be

Natalie (Lili Reinhart) is an formidable faculty senior together with her future mapped out. However after a one-night stand results in vomiting, she decides to take a being pregnant take a look at.

“Look Each Methods,” a deluded Netflix drama, levels this second as a crossroads. It envisions divergent futures for our heroine: one wherein her take a look at is adverse and one other wherein it’s constructive.

Mimicking the thought experiment carried out in “Sliding Doorways,” the film intercuts scenes from these two fates. The primary finds Natalie on a highway journey to Los Angeles together with her bestie, Cara (Aisha Dee), the place she pursues a job in animation. On the identical time, a parallel Natalie grimly resigns herself to motherhood and strikes dwelling to boost the newborn alongside her chagrined dad and mom (Andrea Savage and Luke Wilson).

In a helpful cinematic shorthand, the director, Wanuri Kahiu, distinguishes between the 2 realms by way of shade, making use of reds to the set design of Natalie’s exhilarating Hollywood adventures and blues to that of her lonelier mommy time in Texas.

That an accessible third plan of action — an abortion — goes primarily ignored by each Natalie and the screenwriter, April Prosser, is a mind-boggling issue on this in any other case predictable film. It’s jarring to see Natalie’s unplanned being pregnant launched as a cool dose of actuality moderately than resolution to be made, and the film’s post-Roe launch solely provides insult to harm.

By no means thoughts that “Look Each Methods” appears to posit that, for girls, baby rearing and a profession are in relative opposition — when Natalie involves a fork within the highway, the film hardly lets her look each methods. It bulldozes her down one path, after which the opposite.

Look Each Methods
Not rated. Operating time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix.