Starring: Keith Kupferer, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Tara Mallen, Dolly De Leon, Hanna Dworkin
Distributor: Vendetta Films
Runtime: 115 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life.
A caution that this is a very serious film with serious themes requiring audience attention. It is a film about families and therapy, theatre as therapy, performance as therapy, and the film itself performing some kind of therapeutic function for the audience, some understanding, some empathy, some hope.
To the theme from Oklahoma, ‘Oh What a beautiful morning’, we are introduced to construction worker, Dan. An older, serious man, he is called to the principal’s office with his wife to discuss the expulsion of his daughter, Daisy (Mallen Kupferer), for attacking a teacher. Daisy is angry and exhibits compulsive behaviour. Dan and his wife, Sharon (Mallen), are hopeless as to what to do. And then we see Dan at work, preoccupied, assaulting an aggressive driver. What is behind this family anger?
In fact, only gradually revealed, there are indications of a lawsuit and meetings with an adviser for a deposition. Sharon conducts children singing a song at a school event. Daisy is involved in therapy.
Angry with Dan because of roadworks and noise, Rita, an actress from the Philippines (de Leon so effective in Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness) sees him lose his temper and invites him to come in to meet the group in an old abandoned cinema.
And here begins the theatre connection, the theatre therapy. Rita invites Dan in to join the group, a motley collection and an unlikely community theatre group as you will ever find. Dan is welcomed by the sympathetic and knowledgeable director. Dan is at a loss, but returns, gradually coming more and more involved, the play being Romeo and Juliet. Daisy shows him the video of as Baz Lurhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, to explain iambic pentameter to him. He becomes more and more involved.
The audience is invited to become more and more involved in this strange group, their ups and downs, the rehearsals, the tantrums, the enthusiasms, and Dan secretly returning to rehearsals, seen by his wife and daughter with Rita. Daisy follows him but is then quickly caught up in the enthusiasm of the group. Aspiring to be an actress, Daisy enjoys singing, becoming part of the group.
But, the true story behind the family grief and anger is gradually revealed, and the screenplay opens up parallels with Romeo and Juliet, to the point where it seems a good idea, even though they are old, that Dan and Rita play the star-crossed lovers, the experience, especially in the night of actual performance, bring home the reality of his grief which parallels that of the play. Cathartic for Dan as well as for Sharon and Daisy.
Audiences will be caught up in the drama – and, able to suspend disbelief that such a group could achieve such a performance, could actually stage it with costumes and stagecraft so quickly.
In fact, the actors performing the family in this film are husband and wife and daughter, strong performances, most especially moving is Keith Kupferer completely convincing as Dan. A moving experience.
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