Cabbage and Marriage in “Bubble & Squeak”

By Lucy Spicer

When we first meet the main characters of Bubble & Squeak, they’re sitting together on one side of what is essentially an interrogation table. Declan (Himesh Patel) and Delores (Sarah Goldberg) have traveled to this unnamed destination for their honeymoon — it’s beautiful AND economical, apparently — but they were detained by a customs agent (a droll Steven Yeun, who also serves as a producer on the film) before they could exit the airport. They’ve been accused of smuggling cabbages into the country, a very serious crime. The couple vehemently deny the agent’s allegations, but there’s just one problem — Delores’ pant legs look awfully lumpy and emit a telltale squeak whenever she moves. 

Writer-director Evan Twohy’s absurd comedy is as much about marriage as it is about cabbage. We follow Declan and Delores as they traipse across this nondescript nation — yes, they eventually escape the interrogation room — in search of a border to cross, with a ruthless customs officer named Shazbor (Matt Berry doing his best impression of Werner Herzog) hot on their tail. We meet several eccentric figures along the way, including the rugged Norman (Dave Franco sporting unconventional undergarments), and with each trial the couple is put through, we gain more insight into their relationship and why this misadventure could push it to a breaking point. 

Premiering on January 24 at Eccles Theatre as part of the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Competition, Bubble & Squeak is the feature directorial debut for Twohy, but the story has been years in the making. “This was a short play. It began as a short play that I started almost 15 years ago, and I don’t remember why or what my relationship was to cabbage,” recounts Twohy at the film’s post-premiere Q&A. “But over the last 15 years, I’ve just sort of chipped away at it, and added stories and people and places from my life into it. I feel it’s become a sort of shaggy dough of experiences.”

Translated to a screenplay, this mishmash of experiences stood out as original and intriguing to the film’s cast. “It really blew me away the first time I read it. I hadn’t read anything like it,” remembers Goldberg. “My agent called me and was like, ‘I got this script. I don’t understand it at all. I think it’s for you,’” she continues amid audience laughter. “And I read it, and I was bowled over because there’s such specificity in Evan’s writing, and I love the whole kind of wild, zany metaphor of it all, but it was so rooted and grounded as well.” 

Zany is right. Deadpan line deliveries abound across shots lined up in fashions reminiscent of Wes Anderson. But the humor isn’t without heart. According to Twohy, Declan and Delores’ emotional journey has changed throughout different iterations of the story, just as his own experiences have altered him. “I do think that as I experienced more and hit emotions that I didn’t know before, they sort of became these various characters,” he explains. “They’re all sort of abstractions, probably, of moments, of people from my life. But more like the feelings — I feel like I didn’t have all the feelings when I started writing it, and then over the next 10 years, I captured more and more. Those are what became little scenes and people.”