Although Hohokam recognizably belongs with the other films on the program, the characters appear to be five or ten years older and considerably more battle–scarred and world–weary than those in the other works – and that changes everything. Ross’s couple hold jobs they don’t enjoy; they have money problems and past due MasterCard bills; their relationship has unclaimed emotional baggage; and some nights they bicker and argue about nothing. In short, the bloom is off the rose. Hohokam is not set in the enchanted, magical, romantic land of young love, the first love where most of the other films the current generation of filmmakers is making take place. Possibilities of magic still survive – in the strangest places, like at the zoo – but magic is the decided exception and its presence is all too brief. Life is not a romance, and neither is Ross’s film. Is this the future the characters in the other works have to look forward to? If so, is it enough? Or, to ask the question these filmmakers ask themselves on a daily basis: Are these lives and careers sustainable?