This short review appeared on The Upcoming website here as part of their coverage of the BFI London Film Festival.
Kelly (Juliette Lewis) has just
had a baby with her husband Josh (Josh Hopkins), and is now wandering around
her house, trying to get used to the idea of motherhood and domesticity. She
meets Cal (Jonny Weston), a teenager in a wheelchair, whose rambunctious past
and trapped present mirrors her own. They strike up a relationship that will
threaten everything Kelly has.
Kelly and Cal is yet
another American indie film about a lost middle-class woman torn between her
materialistic friends and a more anarchic past. Kelly used to be in a band – a
Riot Grrrl band called Wetnap – though her mellowing is typified by an
embarrassed nostalgic fondness for Bryan Adams. As it goes with films like
this, she finds release in an outspoken younger man whose hatred of all
compromise and tradition represents first what she has lost and then, when the
film begins to re-establish the status quo for its safe ending, his dangerous
immaturity. Jen McGowan and Amy Lowe Starbin, the director and writer
respectively, ensure that their film about repressed non-conformity hits all of
the typical beats, smugly mocking Kelly’s in-law (including Cybill Shepherd)
and friends for their wholly blinkered and materialistic view of life and yet
re-establish these very things for the ending in which Kelly finally embraces
motherhood and domesticity. Kelly’s fears and her attempts to escape from her
big house and tightly knit family are revealed as something rather selfish,
rather than something truly self-fulfilling, and the film ends triumphantly (to
the upbeat twangs of an indie song) with her having learnt her lesson.
The actors are all rather good,
but they are never given anything to do. McGowan and Starbin prefer dramatic
scenes to end with one character storming out while the other looks on, agape,
shaking their head in sadness and confusion. The viewer can be forgiven for
wishing that they would simply yell and scream at each other until all of those
not so subtle nuances were laid clearly out in the open, instead of this series
of barbed, pointed statements followed closely by a slammed door. When Cal
drowns out Kelly’s complaints by playing the drums, one wants her to toss the
drums out the window. Instead, she leaves.
Films such as this, presumably about repressed emotions,
are much too often repressed themselves. It is a half-decent film well acted,
but there doesn’t seem to be any real heart in it.
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