A SORT OF HOMECOMING

A SORT OF HOMECOMING 

A SORT OF HOMECOMING: C+

A film that broke the rules of storytelling, and yet still worked. It was not a story of regret or of change, but simply a story of reflection. I can't say that the main character didn't change at all, but the change was so subtle that you hardly recognize it. A woman of bottled up anger, that doesn't come to a realization or to an epiphany with her past, yet instead simply faces it and reflects on it so that she can feel it and then release it.

The movie is summed up best through its beautiful advice, "You have to experience pain before you can let go of it."

There are no revelations in this film. No conclusions and ironically enough that is what makes the story special in its own way.

It is simply an honest recollection of the harshness that is life. I appreciated that. I appreciated how it showed that despite our spirit, hard work and determination how others can effect us in both negative and positive ways. How there are other factors that include other people, that can either help or hinder us on our journey. I appreciated the honesty in how one gets to the top, and how hard work is one of the, not the, not the only ingredient to success.

Amy never finds out who her biological mother is and in any other film that would have bothered me. Yet in this film, I wouldn't have had it any other way. Amy was more satisfied with her illusion of who she could have been, and in regards to her own life, the answers she had created as to why she was so different than the simple minded Louisiana family and lifestyle she had been accustomed to. When she chose not to know, I knew that was a foreshadow for the ending.

We never found out what happened to her boyfriend, but we didn't need to.

This is screenwriter Lynn Reed's only work to date. I'm anxious to see if she does more in the future. Her writing style is like none I've ever experienced, simply because we as writers are not only told not to write in that way, we're told that these types of stories DO NOT WORK. I guess sometimes they do.

The performances I feel are where this film lacks. Not that they weren't good, but that they lacked energy. That they lacked passion. Maybe that was the fault of the director too. I don't know.

Again going back to the film's story, there were questions that were essentially asked, and yet never answered. And normally this would irritate the Hell out of me, but in this circumstance leaving them unanswered worked.

It's not the greatest movie I ever saw or anything. In comparison to the many films I've seen, it is a fairly average story, hence the C+ rating I gave it. Yet it is such a unique story, told in such a unique way that I feel compelled to keep hitting on that point.

In life we search so hard and so long for reasons as to why things happened the way they did. For things to add up to explain why this happened and why that happened. We beg, looking for these answers in life itself, a deity of some kind or even within ourselves.

And this film is a reminder that we may never get those answers. It may never make sense.

And that's ok.

Decent film, would have appreciated stronger performances.