Written and Directed by: Charlotte Wells
Starring: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson
★★★★★
[May contain spoilers]
When the credits rolled in, that’s when it hit me. I kept watching for something drastic. I thought the movie was teasing an explosive moment. The father leaving and possibly never returning crossed my mind. I worried that he might die, which is why I felt the need to think back and to read between the lines to understand what wasn’t said. I had hoped that we would get an answer, but we don’t. He has left, but neither why nor how have ever been disclosed.
After their trip, the two return home, and a nice intercut shot shows the daughter in the present pointing a camera at the film’s camera and the father in the past doing the same until the father puts his camera in a bag and exits the door. It was more than enough, despite my initial feeling that it wasn’t.
After processing my confusion for a moment, I mentally fast-forwarded the movie and saw that the dramatic event had already occurred and that the journey had nothing to do with its eventual culmination. The need to understand was the only thing that the story was about. The film’s meaning was present in every small detail, but I was too focused on anticipating something significant to fully appreciate how thin the movie was.
Films typically don’t bother to look for meaning when it comes to the meaning. It’s uncommon for a story to be significant enough to merit investigation, but the desire to see a father through the eyes of a child in an effort to understand what makes him tick, is. Melancholy has consumed me as I write this, because of how carefully and sensitively the movie explores the bond between the father and the daughter. The film exudes an overwhelming amount of love and care.
The father in the story is depicted as having a strong love for his daughter but also as having difficulties. He had become a parent too soon and feels unable to give her the things he feels she should have, but he is unaware of the pressure he is unnecessarily placing on himself. In reality, she is annoyed by the pressure he is putting on himself. When he asks about taking singing lessons, she retorts to him that she is aware he doesn’t have the money for it.
We know how he feels when he hears that, so it’s a quietly crushing moment, but she didn’t mean any harm. She’s merely venting her frustration over what she knows from previous experience to be an empty promise. She doesn’t realize what a cruel remark it is because she doesn’t realize that he is berating himself for being unable to give her more because how could she, she’s just a kid. The tragedy of it all, of course, is that she only wants a dad; she doesn’t want the world that he wants to give her.
Because she now understands who she spoke to and what it meant, it is a moment the adult her now reflects on. She wasn’t aware of what had happened at the time, but she is now. The fact that the memory is so fleeting is what makes it one of the movie’s more moving moments. How it highlights his inner conflict without drawing undue attention to it. The movie is full of moments like this one that feel large despite being small.
The movie’s biggest strength is its overall restraint, which prevents you from having to pause and think about even the smallest moments. They take place and become ingrained, and because the movie lacks any major dramatic high points and focuses primarily on the joy the two people shared, the melancholy undercurrent can emerge more overtly. It’s the kind of effort that will cut through any emotional armor you may have and leave you feeling exposed to the film’s powerful effects.
