Digging for Fire

Aug 21 2015 R 1h 25m
Comedy, Drama

Tim and Lee are married with a young child. The chance to stay at a fancy home in the Hollywood Hills is complicated by Tim's discovery of a bone and a rusty old gun in the yard. Tim is excited by the idea of a mystery, but Lee doesn't want him to dig any further, preferring that he focus on the family taxes, which he promised to do weeks ago. This disagreement sends them on separate and unexpected adventures over the course of a weekend, as Tim and his friends seek clues to the mystery while Lee searches for answers to the bigger questions of marriage and parenthood.

Plot

Married couple Lee and Tim, a part-time yoga instructor and a public school physical education teacher respectively, jump at the opportunity to sit at the secluded Los Angeles Hills house of an actress acquaintance for two weeks as a mini-vacation for them and their three-year-old son, Jude. The house sit starts with an unusual event: Tim finds on the property in the wooded hills just beyond the swimming pool a gun and a bone. He believes the bone could be a human one, and that there could be a murdered dead body buried in the hills in the vicinity of where he found these items. Tim telephones the police, who tell him they can do nothing unless an actual body is found. As such, Lee convinces Tim to drop the subject. On their first weekend at the house, Lee decides to leave Tim on his own for the weekend to complete their income tax return, which he has long put off, while she and Jude go to visit among others her mother and stepfather, and her sister Squiggy and her family, neither who she sees often. Instead of focusing on the taxes, Tim uses the opportunity of Lee being away to hang out with some buddies, who in turn invite some other friends to the house. The mention of his find in the woods leads to some of the people at the house being immersed in his speculation along with him, Max in particular who seems the most interested. Max, however, may have other interests in digging besides finding buried things. Meanwhile, Lee has needed this weekend away from her husband, and time away from Jude, Grandma and Pop Pop, who have agreed to babysit, to re-energize herself and evaluate her current life, which she feels is not her own. By the time Lee and Tim come back together at the end of the weekend, they may have a different understanding of their relationship and their life together with Jude.

Written by

Jake Johnson, Joe Swanberg

Directed by

Joe Swanberg

Production Companies

Lucky Coffee Productions

Languages

English

Awards

1 nomination total

Scores
# of Votes
6,930
Average Rating
5.8 out of 10
Metascore
69
Popularity
NA