DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Our film critic Justin Chang recommends "Blue Heron," the first feature from the writer/director Sophy Romvari. It's a semi-autobiographical drama that touches on Romvari's childhood in British Columbia and her family's experience of tragedy. The film has won numerous prizes at international film festivals and is now playing in select U.S. theaters. Here is Justin's review.
JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: There have been countless coming-of-age movies about the summer that changed everything - a season marked by a move to a new town, a fleeting but memorable romance or a shattering crisis. It's not easy to make a film in this vein that feels fresh or personal. But the Canadian writer-director Sophy Romvari has somehow done both with her exquisite, achingly sad debut feature, "Blue Heron." It's based on events from her own life, which she previously explored in her 2020 documentary short, "Still Processing." That title could just as well have applied to "Blue Heron," in which she peers back into her past and tries to make sense of what she finds.
Most of the story takes place over one summer in the late 1990s. Eight-year-old Sasha, played by Eylul Guven, has just moved with her Hungarian immigrant parents and three older brothers to a small town on Vancouver Island. Life here is idyllic in many ways. The island is beautiful and peaceful, and Sasha enjoys spending time outdoors with her family and making new friends. But a cloud hovers over everything and seems to darken as the summer goes on.
Sasha's oldest brother, Jeremy, played by Edik Beddoes, isn't adjusting well to the move, to put it mildly. He's peevish with his parents and siblings and acts out in ways that range from annoying to dangerous. He climbs up on the roof. He wanders off without telling anyone. He shoplifts and gets arrested. In one relatively mild instance of misbehavior, Jeremy lies down on the front porch one afternoon, keeping so still that a neighbor calls the house, alarmed that he might be dead.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLUE HERON")
ADAM TOMPA: (As Father) No. No, I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm with you. Yes. Yeah.
IRINGO RETI: (As Mother) Who was that?
TOMPA: (As Father) Jason from across the street. He wanted to let us know that our son is dead on the front step.
RETI: (As Mother, speaking Hungarian).
TOMPA: (As Father) I told him we are aware and not to worry. He will come back to life soon.
CHANG: Sasha's parents are sensitively played by Adam Tompa and Iringo Reti, who show us a loving marriage that's come under all kinds of strain. There's Jeremy, of course, but there are also the challenges of settling into a new home in a still fairly new country. Sasha's father spends a lot of time working on his computer, and his wife is frustrated at having to do most of the housework and child-rearing. But Romvari doesn't exaggerate these pressure points. Nor does she overplay Jeremy's behavior.
The film is meticulous about showing the family's genuinely happy times, including those rare moments when Jeremy cracks a smile and comes out of his shell. It's as if Romvari wants to be fair to Jeremy, to not let his diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder define him. In time, though, as Jeremy keeps acting out, the situation becomes untenable. And a social worker, one of many professionals brought in to help, recommends that Jeremy be sent away.
In its dramatic restraint and psychological insight, "Blue Heron" reminded me of two exceptional recent films about parents and kids - "Aftersun" and "Janet Planet," both of which were also partly inspired by their directors' childhoods. Romvari's film is the most carefully constructed memory piece I've seen in some time. You get the sense that she's trying to put together what she remembers as precisely as she can, right down to the clunky '90s Windows interface on Sasha's dad's computer.
Romvari treats the camera as an instrument of subjectivity. For the most part, we see mainly what Sasha sees and how she sees it. Key moments are glimpsed from odd, oblique angles. Events that Sasha never witnessed or perhaps forgot are not dramatized at all. At times, the camera pans idly from left to right, a movement that simulates the act of sifting through the past. At roughly the halfway mark, "Blue Heron" makes a daring leap. Suddenly, we are following an older version of Sasha played by Amy Zimmer, who is now, like Romvari, a filmmaker, keen to make sense of her family history. But the way she goes about it triggers a surprising twist that gently toys with our sense of time and reality.
In asking what she or anyone could have done differently, Romvari laments the imperfections of memory, the effects of mental illness and the limitations of even the most loving family. This beautiful and perceptive film feels like something summoned from deep within her consciousness and piped directly into ours.
BIANCULLI: Film critic Justin Chang reviewed the new film "Blue Heron" by Sophy Romvari.
On Monday's show, actor, writer and carpenter Nick Offerman. He stars in the new critically acclaimed TV show "Margo's Got Money Troubles," based on the popular book of the same name. Offerman won an Emmy Award for his work on the series "The Last Of Us," and he's best known for playing Ron Swanson on the comedy "Parks And Recreation." I hope you can join us.
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(SOUNDBITE OF REAL ESTATE SONG, "BEACH COMBER")
BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our senior producer today is Thea Chaloner. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman and Julian Herzfeld. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper.
For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BEACH COMBER")
REAL ESTATE: (Singing) Pensacola beach. You keep repeating while you're waiting for that sound, apparatus to the ground. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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