COMEDY comes in several flavours. Stupid gets short shrift. Silly gets a better ride when it offers a mote of clever. Intelligent is sheer delight.

Rebecca Miller wrote and directed this warmly intelligent comedy. Greta Gerwig plays Maggie, a secondary teacher in her mid-30s, so far unable to sustain a relationship.

The nesting urge has come upon her. She chooses to find a sperm donor and use the turkey baster to squirt it in without professional assistance. Doesn’t work. But it does bring her into contact with aspiring novelist John (Ethan Hawke) whose sperm delivery works just fine.

A few years later, John, divorced from fiercely intelligent academic Georgette (Julianne Moore giving the film’s top performance), has married Maggie who now shares parenting of their collective brood.

The rest of the film deals with those three people trying to straighten out their relationship. It’s not going to work along the traditional lines. For John, trying to write his novel is more important than finishing it. Maggie thinks it’s great work. Not so Georgette who has come back to loving John but in time finds in Maggie a lost soul to whom she can extend friendship’s hand.

While comedic values don’t dominate the story, when they manifest themselves they are delightful. My favourite is when Georgette returns John’s manuscript that she has agreed to read. The film offers numerous other intelligent comic moments. All you need to do is wait for them.

At Palace Electric