Fantasy, peak capitalism, and the road not taken
“Peak Season” Review: Beautifully and very brightly shot, the dramatic Tetons almost recede into the distance, a set piece for this all-too-human romantic-dramedy.
“Mountain towns can be understood as appendages of elite metropolitan centers, places where the ultra-wealthy and the very powerful go to purify themselves from the soul sucking hyper-productive world of the city.” —David Hedges, WHO GETS TO LIVE IN THE MOUNTAINS?
There was a time in 2020 and 2021 when it seemed like there was a new story about rich people overrunning America’s mountain towns every other week. “Peak Season,” the recently-released feature film written by Henry Loevner and co-directed with Steven Kanter, is the fictionalized version of one of those articles, throwing these New Western characters into a sharp, glaring light.
The film is set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming: the poster child for inequality in America’s mountain towns. Jackson Hole (more specifically, Teton County) was the subject of sociologist Justin Farrell’s 2020 book, Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Jackson is still the most unequal metro area in the United States.1 And these wealthy newcomers are pricing the people who make cities run—teachers, nurses, hospitality workers, cleaners, landscapers—out of their homes.
Knowing this, it’s no surprise that the film opens with a tap-tap on a car window, and a conscientious old-timer in flamboyant western garb warning Loren (Derrick DeBlasis) that “you’re not supposed to be sleeping in your car here, and I’m just concerned the sheriff might come by and give you a hard time.” Whether this is genuinely well-meant or code for “I don’t want you sleeping here, you bum” is left up to the viewer.
After dumping his pee bottle, feeding his dog, heating up baked beans on a Coleman stove, and rinsing off under a camp shower, Loren meets up with a client to take him fly fishing (one of his many odd jobs). He’s greeted with a sour and curt, “You’re late.” The client continues behaving like an oaf and a buffoon in the river, but seems to warm up to Loren, boasting, “I almost moved to Beaver Creek after college…life had other plans…I got a job at PayPal…started my own business…married with two kids…I’ll tell you what though, I could move here today.”
“You definitely can,” Loren replies. “The resorts are way short-staffed.”
“That would be so fucking cool…what would we do with the company?” he asks, implicating Loren in his scheme, but without waiting for an answer: “I bet I could buy 100 acres of land out here.”
Loren doesn’t look into the camera—à la Jim in “The Office”—but he could have, and the effect would have been the same: Get a load of this idiot. There is a clear invitation to the viewer to mock and pity and even despise this caricature of entitlement.
Only after this tone-setting scene do we meet Amy (Claudia Restrepo) and Max (Ben Coleman), an affianced couple visiting from New York City and staying in a palatial vacation home owned by Max’s uncle, who only uses it during the ski season. The slight disconnect between the couple is immediately apparent, when Amy wants to go skinny dipping in the hot tub, and Max is “in the middle of this thing right now.” Also, they need to leave in 20 minutes to meet some of Max’s family friends: George (Fred Melamed) and Lydia (Stephanie Courtney, also known as Progressive’s Flo, in a delightful non-Flo appearance).
George and Lydia are among the wealthy new “full-time residents” (“six months and one day…according to the IRS, anyway”) who have blithely taken over the city. “We love it here,” they gush. “It’s such a quaint little cow-town. I guess what I love is the authenticity. You go to a bar or something like that, you don’t know who has a $100 in the bank or who’s got $100 million. You look at a guy and you’re just like, hey, is that a rancher, a ski bum, or a hedge fund manager? I mean, we all look alike.”
The tension between Max and Amy becomes more apparent when it is revealed to Max’s obvious discomfort that Amy quit her consulting job at Deloitte because of burnout. Max wants her to jump right back into work, but she’s not so sure. What if she became a public school teacher? Max is horrified: “Babe, get paid like $10K a year to be some kind of glorified corrections officer?”
Inevitably, Max’s work prevents him from going on a guided fly fishing expedition that George arranged for the couple, so he drops Amy off alone at a gas station to meet Loren for a solo adventure. They don’t catch any fish, but they have an easy, friendly rapport. When Max has to go back to the city for work, Amy seeks Loren out, tagging along to a bonfire (where the city’s ski bum types come in for their fair share of gentle mockery) and inviting him on a hike, which he skips his landscaping job to accompany her on.
Their flirtation blossoms, and it is very sweet, if sometimes also uncomfortable. Amy is clearly toying with the idea of alternative life trajectories to the one she’s currently on, perhaps as intrigued and attracted by the laid-back mountain lifestyle as much as this one particular laid-back mountain man—although to be fair, Loren seems pretty great when compared to Amy’s rather unlikeable fiancé. What would she be willing to give up to make that fantasy a reality? What will it cost her to go back home?
It sounds melodramatic when put that way, but the gap between fantasy and reality is subtly (and not-so-subtly) explored throughout the film, as well as the tension between work and play, authenticity and imitation, the haves and the have-lesses. While the film is beautifully and very brightly shot, the dramatic Tetons almost recede into the distance, a set piece for this all-too-human romantic-dramedy.
It’s worth noting that there are no real “locals” in the film. Loren is from California originally, so even he has come to Wyoming to live out a fantasy. But his fantasy seems to be higher on the “authentic” scale than others—for example—Max’s flirtatious childhood friend, who bedecks herself in cow prints and fringe and poses in front of a cow pasture for a Instagram-worthy photo shoot. And the film doesn’t directly address the darker side of the affordability crisis in Jackson. But because Amy is the child of immigrants and greets the housekeeper in Spanish, the film at least nods at the sizable Latino community that helps run the town.
“Peak Season” shifts a bit awkwardly from its dry mockery of the entitled rich playacting at being cowboys, and its more sincere treatment of Amy and Loren’s budding relationship and their attendant longing, desires, and fears. Their romance is tinged with a kind of “romantic melancholy” that the absurdity of their environs and the people around them was perhaps meant to throw into greater relief, although the difference in tone is sometimes jarring.2
There were times when I wondered whether some of the caricatures—of wealth, of privilege, of selfish, self-centered narcissism—were too on the nose, too exaggerated, too corny. And yet they had the ring of truth. In my heart of hearts, I think some New Westerners are probably even worse.
Peak Season is available on streaming platforms now, and there are screenings scheduled at the Glenwood Arts Theater in Overland Park, Kansas, through September 19.
Incidentally, while researching this paragraph, I learned that Jackson Hole is the valley and wilderness recreation area, whereas Jackson is the town—although the two are often conflated.
Credit where credit is due: Ethan Davison first drew my attention to the similarities with “Lost in Translation.”
The phenomenon of places becoming playgrounds of the rich recurs throughout history. Your review is thought-provoking and well-written. I think of the history of the springs of Saratoga, Acadia and Mt. Desert and the Rockefellers, the Taconic Parkway as an early auto road out of the city, the Grand Hotels of the White Mountains and the Adirondacks, the Lodges of the railroads into the Rockies, Theodore Roosevelt. I am dimly aware of the European historical equivalents. “Leave no trace” is aspirational and admirable. We don’t know what we don’t know, and I try to keep that in mind when I learn something new. I appreciate Pinch of Dirt as a vehicle for sharing thoughts, ideas, and experiences.
Vivid review! I felt almost that I was watching the film (and discussing it with a like-minded, intelligent friend afterwards). My take on the problem of wealthy incomers is that, like so many other problems, it could be addressed by reducing the shameful inequalities accepted without thought in the US & UK (and probably in most other countries, though I believe Denmark does better).