Monday, June 20, 2022, 12:30pm Castro 🙂
+Streaming
(note: shown in the program guide as “T.B.A.”)
Abbie (Willow Shields, pictured left, Katniss’ sister in the Hunger Games films) has graduated from high school and gone off to art school in Los Angeles, leaving her parents on their own to care for her brother Kayden (Jonathan Simao, right), who has autism and is almost entirely non-verbal. Abbie has been a major part of caring for Kayden, and her parents haven’t really figured out how to make it work in her absence.
Structurally, we begin with events near the end of the chronology of the film, just after Something Very Bad has happened, then jump back a few months and track forward from there. Unfortunately, the Something Very Bad weighs down the whole film, giving it a heavy, melodramatic feel, even in many of the joyful moments. The characters don’t yet know about SVB, but they still have a palpable sense of the potential for doom and disaster. The father is remarkably unsympathetic, and I really didn’t get much feel for the other characters, either. The actor who plays the brother is in real life on the autism spectrum, giving his performance a depth of authenticity often lacking in portrayals of people with autism. Unfortunately, the other characters mostly feel detached and distant.
It’s not a bad film, but it was rather disappointing. Recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment