“Strange But True,” a neo-noir thriller on VOD starring Amy Ryan and Margaret Qualley, examines grief in the context of an ordinary family thrown into extraordinary situations.
The action takes place against the backdrop of loss. Five years ago Ronnie Chase (Connor Jessup) and Melissa’s (Margaret Qualley) prom night began as they all do, with a rented tux, a frilly dress and proud parents taking photos. It ended in tragedy, with Ronnie dead in a car crash, an event that sent shock waves through the family. Stricken, his folks Charlene (Amy Ryan) and Richard (Greg Kinnear), split under the weight of their grief. Younger brother Philip (Nick Robinson) hightails it to NYC to pursue his dream of being a photographer and girlfriend Melissa is wracked with guilt, left with only her dreams of her late boyfriend.
Cut to present day. Charlene’s life has fallen apart. Her husband and job are gone, so when Melissa shows up, five years after the fateful night, claiming she is pregnant with Ronnie’s baby, she is not met with hugs and congratulations.
“If you think about it,” says Phillip, home recuperating from a badly broken leg, “there’s a chance what she said is true. If, and it’s a big if, if Ronnie’s sperm was somehow frozen before he died there’s a chance Melissa could have used it and impregnated herself years later.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Charlene snarls. “He was a teenager with his whole life ahead of him. Why would he do that?”
She sets off to find a rational explanation while Phillip grasps at straws, consulting psychics and leaving no possibility off the table. “I might not believe that this is Ronnie’s baby,” he says to Melissa,” but I believe that you believe it and I believe that Ronnie would have too. If that makes me an uncle, so be it.”
That search is the bedrock for a story packed with secrets and intrigue. Adapted from John Searles’s 2004 novel, “Strange But True” is a bit of a nesting doll of mysteries. Everyone has a backstory and a different relationship with the intrigue that forms the plot and the action toggles between past and present. That means there’s a lot to wade through in the film’s tight ninety-minute running time but director Rowan Athale manages it. He weaves psychological drama, a hint of paranormal, suspense and even some gothic horror into the story.
In the end the pregnancy is a McGuffin, simply a device to put all these elements into motion, but the result is a tightly wound thriller that leads to a gripping and satisfying conclusion.
Tough and tender, “What They Had” is a story of Alzheimer’s and dysfunction but never dips into the easy sentimentality of many other family dramas.
Writer-director Elizabeth Chomko begins the story with Ruth (Blythe Danner), in a dementia daze, dressed in a nightgown, getting out of bed and walking off into a blizzard. The disappearance is short-lived but serious enough for Ruth’s daughter Bridget (Hilary Swank) and granddaughter Emma (Taissa Farmiga) to fly to Chicago from California to come to her side.
Son Nick (Michael Shannon) thinks it is time to put Ruth in a home where she can be looked after but Burt (Robert Forster), her husband of decades, wants her to stay home where he can look after her. Caught between Nick and Burt, Bridget believes her mother should be put in a memory care facility called Reminisce Neighbourhood but is torn in the best way to make it happen.
The synopsis does “What They Had” no favours. It sounds like a downer, an earnest movie of the week style story of bickering siblings up against a stubborn patriarch. But it is more than that. There is pain, anger and heartbreak but there is also humour. Shannon’s outbursts, born of frustration and a certain amount of realism, are often amusing and always hit exactly the right notes.
There are strong performances across the board—Swank, Forster and Farmiga all feel completely authentic—but the film’s beating heart is Danner, who plays Ruth as though she’s wearing a shroud of sadness at her fleeting memory.
“What They Said” occasionally feels cluttered, as though the focus is spread to widely over all the characters, but its unflinching eye for detail is a strength not a minus.
When I mention to Blythe Danner there is Academy Award buzz around her work as Carol, a widow taking tentative steps into the world of dating in the new film I’ll See You in My Dreams she says, “That, I find idiotic.” Long pause. “But thank you.”
Danner made her film debut in 1972, two years after she won a Best Supporting Actress Tony Award for Butterflies Are Free on Broadway. Since then she has amassed over one hundred film and television credits, including all three Meet the Parents movies and Sylvia, where she played the mother of Sylvia Plath as portrayed by her real life daughter Gwyneth Paltrow.
Remarkably I’ll See You in My Dreams is her first lead role on the big screen. She plays Carol, a widowed woman whose carefully constructed world is rattled when she starts dating Bill (Sam Elliott).
“I think it is a very underplayed role,” she says. “Yes, she runs the gamut of emotions but there is nothing that is very extreme in my playing of this role. It is heartening that people are touched by the whole film and if they are by my performance that is very flattering but I don’t see it as an Oscar worthy performance. I just don’t see it. The possibility seems absurd to me.”
The veteran actress admits to feeling uncomfortable accepting praise
“I do think there is something wrong with me. I really do. I’m very perverse. It may be the fact that I went to Quaker schools growing up. I grew up in a household where we were always told not to get a big head about being received positively. It’s the work that is important. My favourite thing when I played Nina in The Seagull was her speech at the end when she says, ‘I know now that it is not the fame and the glory that is important, but how to endure.’”
Danner’s wonderfully rendered portrayal of Carol is being called “quietly touching” by the New York Times and “deeply felt” by Variety but she credits writer, director Brett Haley with writing a script that was, “clear and accessible and simple.”
“It was all on the page,” she says. “I felt so grateful. I found it effortless. I feel a little guilty about saying that because it should have been harder. From the beginning to the end it was a gift.”
Moviegoers of a certain age can sometimes feel beaten up during the summer months. From “Avengers: Age of Ultron” to “San Andreas” it’s a loud and proud season that can sometimes feel foreign to anyone who came of age before everyone tweeted their every thought in 140 characters.
Every now and again a movie cuts through the blockbuster noise, quietly making its way into the theatre. This summer “I’ll See You in My Dreams” is that movie.
Blythe Danner is Carol, a widow and retired teacher. Single since her husband died twenty years before, she decides, at the urging of her friends (Rhea Perlman, Mary Kay Place, and June Squibb), to try her hand at dating.
She finds company in the form of two men, pool cleaner Lloyd (Martin Starr) who awakens her youthful side and Bill (Sam Elliott) a handsome, straight-talking septuagenarian who wines and dines her. Her first spots her in the vitamin aisle of a drug store. “You don’t need all that,” he says. “You’re just right the way you are.”
The relationships shake Carol’s carefully constructed world—she sings karaoke, smokes dope and gets moony—which are the beats almost every one of these “finding love after 65” movies have, except those other movies don’t have Danner and Elliott in the leads.
Too often relegated to supporting parts—unbelievably this is Danner’s first big screen leading role—these two are the beating heart of the story and could get by on charisma alone, but writer-director Brett Haley doesn’t simply rely on his stars to carry the day. He has supplied them with a story that could easily have fallen into hackneyed silver fox clichés but avoids them by not shying away from real talk about aging and romance.
For older audiences “I’ll See You in My Dreams” is just what the doctor ordered, an antidote to “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
Blythe Danner Interview with Richard Crouse for “I’ll See You in My Dreams ”
“I think it is a very underplayed role,” she says. “Yes, she runs the gamut of emotions but there is nothing that is very extreme in my playing of this role. It is heartening that people are touched by the whole film and if they are by my performance that is very flattering but I don’t see it as an Oscar worthy performance. I just don’t see it. The possibility seems absurd to me.”
