Review: ‘Wildflower’ (2023), starring Kiernan Shipka, Dash Mihok, Charlie Plummer, Erika Alexander, Samantha Hyde, Jacki Weaver and Jean Smart

March 19, 2023

by Carla Hay

Pictured clockwise, from left: Reid Scott, Alexandra Daddario, Jean Smart, Charlie Plummer, Kiernan Shipka, Samantha Hyde, Dash Mihok, Jacki Weaver and Brad Garrett in “Wildflower” (Photo courtesy of Momentum Pictures)

“Wildflower” (2023)

Directed by Matt Smukler

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in Nevada (and briefly in Van Nuys, California), the comedy/drama film “Wildflower,” which is based on real people, features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asians and Latinos) representing the working-class. middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A sarcastic and intelligent teenager, who is in her last year of high school, gets in a coma after a mysterious accident, and she narrates her life story of being raised by intellectually disabled parents whom she resents because they depend on her to be the most responsible person in the household.

Culture Audience: “Wildflower” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and don’t mind watching rambling and disjointed stories about teenagers and bickering families.

Kannon Omachi and Kiernan Shipka in “Wildflower” (Photo courtesy of Momentum Pictures)

Based on a true story, “Wildflower” has an admirable performance from Kiernan Shipka, but there are too many problems with this uneven dramedy, including awkward subplots that go nowhere and underdeveloped characters that are bad parodies of real people. It’s one of those movies that has much of the narrative coming from voiceovers of a character who’s supposed to be in a coma. Very few movies can pull off this type of narrative in a way that is appealing. In “Wildflower,” the coma narration is cringeworthy—and so are many other parts of this misguided film.

Directed by Matt Smukler and written by Jana Savage, “Wildflower” is inspired by the real-life experiences of Smukler’s family. According to the “Wildflower” production notes, the protagonist of the movie is based on Smukler’s niece Christina. As part of Christina’s college admission application to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Smukler made a short documentary film about Christina’s experiences growing up as a child of parents with intellectual disabilities. Savage came up with the idea to make Christina’s story into a scripted feature film. The result is “Wildflower” (which had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival), but the film takes shameless detours into formulaic schmaltz that cheapens the quality of what could have been a more meaningful movie.

In the beginning of “Wildflower” (which takes place mostly in an unnamed city in Nevada) viewers see Bambi “Bea” Johnson (played by Shipka) is in a coma in a hospital. Bea is 17 years old and in her last year of high school. She has a head injury, but no one at the hospital knows how she got the injury. A flashback later shows how an unconscious Bea ended up at the hospital and what caused her injury. Bea’s voiceover narration tells viewers that she can’t remember how she got injured either, but she wants to tell her life story, based on what she remembers of her life.

Several of Bea’s worried family members have gathered in the hospital room. And because this movie is filled with clichés about bickering families, it doesn’t take long for the arguing to start. The movie doesn’t do a very good job of introducing these family members, who talk over each other and disjointedly show up in this hospital scene that takes place in the beginning of the movie. You probably have to take notes (mentally or literally) to keep track of all these squawking relatives.

Bea is the only child of Derek Johnson (played by Dash Mihok) and Sharon Johnson (played by Samantha Hyde), who have intellectual disabilities. A flashback later explains that Derek got a head injury in a car accident when he was 12 years old. Sharon was born with an underdeveloped brain.

Derek and Sharon used to live in Van Nuys, California. They met when Sharon was 21, and Derek (who was around the same age, maybe slightly older) was hired by Sharon’s parents to mow the family’s lawn. Sharon and Derek began dating each other soon afterward. Derek and Sharon quickly fell in love wither each other, and they eloped—much to the dismay of both of their families.

Sharon’s parents are Peg McDonald (played by Jean Smart) and Earl Edelman (played by Brad Garrett), who are now divorced. (Peg went back to her maiden surname after the divorce.) Peg and Earl are among the family members who are in Bea’s hospital room.

Derek’s parents are Loretta (played by Jacki Weaver) and Hal (played by Chris Mulkey), who are also divorced. Hal is not in the hospital room, but Loretta is—much to the disdain of Peg, because the two women have had a longstanding feud with each other. Derek is an only child.

Peg has another daughter: the materialistic and vain Joy (played by Alexandra Daddario), who has a condescending attitude toward her sister Sharon. Joy and her equally snooty husband Ben (played by Reid Scott) are also in the hospital room. Peg is a control freak who constantly complains if things don’t go her way. Joy is a lot like Peg.

Loretta, who smokes a lot and drinks a lot of alcohol, immediately annoys Peg by lighting up a cigarette inside the hospital room. It’s a very rude (not to mention illegal) thing for Loretta to do in a hospital room, but Peg is the only one in the family with the backbone to stand up to Loretta about it. The movie makes it a running gag that Loretta’s constant cigarette smoking annoys Peg. And it’s a “joke” that quickly gets old and tiresome. Loretta’s obnoxiousness is supposed to look “cute” because she’s a senior citizen, but it just looks grating.

Flashbacks show that after Derek and Sharon got married, both of their parents were worried about Derek and Sharon not being capable of raising a family. During a family meeting between Derek’s parents and Sharon’s parents, both couples agreed that it would be a bad idea for Derek and Sharon to become parents. The purpose of the meeting was to figure out what to do about this marriage that does not have the approval of all four of the newlyweds’ parents. However, there was a big disagreement about what to do.

Sharon’s parents (who raised Sharon as Jewish) thought that Derek and Sharon should get divorced as soon as possible. However, Derek’s parents (especially Loretta) are strict Catholics who think divorce is a big stigma. Loretta suggested that Sharon be sterilized and said that Sharon was a promiscuous temptress who “trapped” Derek into this marriage. (Loretta used cruder terms than that to describe Sharon.) Peg was deeply offended by Loretta’s remarks and has held a grudge against Loretta ever since. Neither of these parents’ schemes became a reality, since Derek and Sharon became parents to Bea and remain happily married throughout this story.

More flashbacks show that when Bea was 10 years old (played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong), her father Derek illegally taught her how to drive. The secret is exposed when Bea crashed the car on a neighborhood street (fortunately, no one was hurt) when Bea went looking for the family dog, which ran out of the house because Sharon left the front door open. Although Bea denied being the driver of the car, Derek and Sharon were declared unfit parents. Joy and Ben (who had become parents of twin sons at this point) got custody of Bea.

Joy and Ben find out that Bea is extremely resistant to their rules and their trendy New Age way of parenting. From a very young age, Bea was expected to handle a lot of responsibilities for her parents, who treated her like a mini-adult who didn’t have the type of rules and discipline that other kids were expected to have. Bea is bratty and rebellious under the guardianship of Ben and Joy. Ben privately tells Joy what he thinks of Bea’s irreverence: “She’s like a feral dog.”

Eventually, Derek and Sharon convince child welfare authorities to let them have custody of Bea again. She has spent her teenage years living with her parents. As a compromise to giving back custody of Bea to her parents, Joy and Ben have insisted on paying for Bea to go to an elite private school.

Derek has problems holding a steady job. He currently works as a janitor at a recreational games center. He also plans to become a rideshare driver. Sharon, who is a gambling addict, was getting disability payments from the government until Derek put a stop to it, because he doesn’t think Sharon is disabled. Bea has a part-time job doing janitorial work at her school, to help pay for her parents’ household expenses, but she gets angry and frustrated because her parents often irresponsibly spend the money that they take from her.

There’s a lot of Bea’s family history to unpack in this movie, but “Wildflower” has a very disappointing way of starting off on one tangent and then not really finishing it before going on to others tangents and not really finishing them either. The results are an erratic, overstuffed movie fllled with a lot of underdeveloped characters, unfinished subplots and unanswered questions. “Wildflower” also has trouble balancing the comedy and drama.

There’s a very distracting and unnecessary subplot about a children’s protective services worker named Mary (played by Erika Alexander), who first met Bea on the day of the car accident. And lo and behold, Mary shows up years later at the hospital, while Bea is in a coma. Even though there’s no evidence that Bea’s parents were responsible for Bea’s head injury, Mary is there to investigate, since Bea’s parents lost custody of Bea in the past.

And so, there are several scenes of Mary awkwardly interviewing people close to Bea. Mary wants to find out who caused the injury, and she wants to determine if Bea’s parents are fit to take care of Bea if she wakes up from the coma and is discharged from the hospital. Mary is inclined to think that Bea’s parents will need help taking care of Bea in Bea’s recovery.

Bea’s life in high school is also told mostly in flashbacks. Before she ended up in a coma, Bea was an outstanding academic student whose favorite subject was astronomy. She’s also a star of the school’s track team. However, she shuns the idea of being a “popular” student. She feels like a misfit at this school, because she comes from a low-income household and because her parents are disabled.

Bea has a guidance counselor at school named Alex Vasquez (played by Victor Rasuk), who has been encouraging Bea to apply to universities to continue her education. However, Bea has been very reluctant because she thinks she needs to skip college to take care of her parents. Bea is also worried about how much college tuition might cost, even though Mr. Vasquez assures Bea that she’s such an excellent student, she should have no problems getting a scholarship. UCLA is one of the universities that Mr. Vasquez suggests to Bea.

Another person who thinks Bea should go to a university after she graduates from high school is Ethan Rivers (played by Charlie Plummer), a classmate who has recently transferred to this high school. Ethan comes from a rich family (his father owns the “largest Porta Potty company in Nevada”), but he downplays his wealth in order to let people know that he’s humble and down-to-earth. Many of the students automatically think Ethan is kind of weird because the word has gotten out that Ethan had testicular cancer that left him with one testicle.

Bea’s best friend at school is Mia Tanaka (played by Kannon Omachi), who is a brainy eccentric, just like Bea. And there’s predictably a “mean girls” clique that bullies and taunts Bea and Mia. This clique is led by an ultra-snob named Esther (played by Chloe Rose Robertson), who is attracted to Ethan, but she’s already dating someone else. Ethan, who’s in the same astronomy class as Bea, tries to get close to her by offering to share his class notes with her, but she rebuffs his obvious interest in her the first time that he talks to her.

Mia and Bea act like they don’t care about being accepted by the “cool kids,” but they really do care, because Mia and Bea tell Sharon to buy alcohol for them (it was Bea’s idea) so they can take the alcohol as a gift to crash a house party hosted by Esther. Also at the party is Esther’s older brother Tyler (played by Josh Plasse), an adult of college age who gets a snide remark from Bea because she says it’s pathetic that someone of Tyler’s age is partying with mostly underage high schoolers. It’s at this party that Bea and Ethan connect for the first time.

“Wildflower” then drones on and on with typical high school drama that sometimes gets very dull. Mia and Bea made a pact not to go to their school prom, but then things change when Ethan asks Bea to the prom, and she says yes. There’s some love triangle jealousy between Ethan, Bea and Esther. And, of course, there’s more arguing between Bea and her parents.

Nowhere does this movie explain why Bea has to do cleanup work at her high school, when there are so many other part-time jobs she could have had that wouldn’t make her feel embarrassed in front of her peers. It all just looks contrived for a scene so that “mean girl” Esther and “snarky underdog” Bea can have a verbal confrontation where Esther tries to humiliate Bea, and Bea makes snappy comments as a comeback. (This isn’t spoiler information. It’s shown in the movie’s trailer.)

The romance between Ethan and Bea is sweet but very rushed and at times hard to believe. Even though Ethan meets Bea’s parents and wholeheartedly accepts them with no judgment, Bea never shows an interest in meeting Ethan’s family, nor does Ethan invite her to meet his family. It’s yet another question that the movie never bothers to answer. Meanwhile, the friendship between Mia and Bea is reduced to superficial scenes of them shopping together and debating about whether or not it’s worth going to their school’s upcoming prom.

There are several talented cast members in “Wildflower,” but only Shipka has a character with layers to a personality. Everyone else just kind of drifts in and out of the story, in service of vapid sitcom scenarios or melodrama that often looks fake. “Wildflower” does the biggest disservice to Weaver, whose aggressively clownish Loretta character is very beneath Weaver’s immense talent.

The movie’s depiction of disabled people sometimes falls into negative stereotypes. “Wildflower” is not unwatchable, but it lacks a clear vision and a cohesive narrative. For a movie with a lot of voiceover narration, it ultimately doesn’t have a lot of interesting things to say.

Momentum Pictures released “Wildflower” in select U.S. cinemas on March 17, 2023. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on March 21, 2023.

Review: ‘Deep Water’ (2022), starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas

March 17, 2022

by Carla Hay

Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck in “Deep Water” (Photo by Claire Folger/20th Century Studios/Hulu)

“Deep Water” (2022)

Directed by Adrian Lyne

Culture Representation: Taking place in New Orleans, the dramatic film “Deep Water” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with a few Latinos and African Americans) representing the middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A wealthy husband, who has an open marriage, becomes the main focus of suspicion when some of his wife’s lovers end up dead. 

Culture Audience: “Deep Water” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, who are the main attractions in this frequently dull and formulaic crime thriller.

Jade Fernandez, Tracy Letts and Kristen Connolly in “Deep Water” (Photo by Claire Folger/20th Century Studios/Hulu)

“Deep Water” is proof that it’s not enough to have good-looking people in a stylish-looking film. It has a basic mystery that’s not very suspenseful, in addition to monotonous mind games played by the central married couple. Perhaps most disappointing of all is that “Deep Water” does nothing new or clever in the seemingly endless stream of movies about marital infidelity that causes chaos in people’s lives.

“Deep Water” director Adrian Lyne has made a career out of these types of movies, with a filmography that includes 1987’s “Fatal Attraction,” 1993’s “Indecent Proposal” and 2002’s “Unfaithful,” his previous film before “Deep Water.” Zach Helm and Sam Levinson adapted the “Deep Water” screenplay from Patricia Highsmith’s 1957 novel of the same name. Unfortunately, the movie has a drastically different ending from the book. The movie’s conclusion is intended to be shocking, but it just falls flat.

Executives at 20th Century Studios obviously thought “Deep Water” was an embarrassing dud, because the movie’s theatrical release was cancelled. “Deep Water” was then sent straight to Hulu and other Disney-owned streaming services where Hulu is not available. It’s also not a good sign that the stars of “Deep Water” have distanced themselves from “Deep Water” by not doing any full-scale publicity and promotion for the movie.

Up until the ending, the “Deep Water” movie (which takes place in the early 2020s) adheres very closely to the book’s original story, with some modern updates and a change of location. Wealthy married couple Vic Van Allen (played by Ben Affleck) and Melinda Van Allen (played by Ana de Armas) live in New Orleans with their precocious 6-year-old daughter Trixie (played by Grace Jenkins), who has an interest in science and is somewhat fixated on the children’s song “Old McDonald.” (In the “Deep Water” book, the story takes place in a small, fictional U.S. town called Little Wesley.) The Van Allens seem to have a perfect life of privilege and leisure. Vic is a retired millionaire because he invented a computer chip that’s used in war drones. Melinda is a homemaker/socialite.

It’s common knowledge among Vic and Melinda’s close circle of friends that Vic and Melinda have an open marriage, although Vic and Melinda have never really come right out and told their friends the details of this arrangement. Melinda flaunts her extramarital affairs by inviting her lovers to the same parties where she and Vic will be. At these parties (the movie has several of these party scenes), Melinda openly flirts with her lovers and sometimes has sexual trysts with them at the parties. Vic ends up meeting these lovers and is mostly polite but distant with them.

Vic and Melinda’s close friends include musician bachelor Grant (played by Lil Rel Howery); married couple Mary Washington (played by Devyn A. Tyler) and Kevin Washington (played by Michael Scialabba); and married couple Jonas Fernandez (played by Dash Mihok) and Jen Fernandez (played by Jade Fernandez). Whenever these friends try to tactfully talk to Vic about Melinda indiscreetly showing off her lovers, Vic brushes off their concerns. Vic gives the impression that he doesn’t want to be a possessive and jealous husband, and that he and Melinda have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” agreement when it comes to any of her extramarital affairs.

During the course of the story, three of Melinda’s past and present lovers are shown in the movie: musician Joel Dash (played by Brendan Miller), who ends up moving away to New Mexico; lounge pianist Charlie De Lisle (played by Jacob Elordi), who has been giving piano lessons to Melinda; and real-estate developer Tony Cameron (played by Finn Wittrock), who is visiting the area to scout for some property. All three men are good-looking and younger than Vic, but Vic has a lot more money than they do. And at some point or another, all three of these lovers are separately invited into the Van Allen home for a social visit.

Melinda has apparently made it a habit to invite each of her extramarital lovers to parties and other social gatherings, but never so that all of the lovers are in the same place at the same time. At these events, Melinda introduces a lover as her “friend,” even though it’s obvious that he’s more than a friend. When Melinda and Vic are at these parties, Melinda spends more time and is more affectionate with her lovers than she is with her husband. Vic often just stands by and doesn’t confront her about it.

There are several scenes that show Melinda drunk at these parties, or coming home drunk, implying that she abuses alcohol. Some of the couple’s friends seem to feel sorry for Vic, because they think he doesn’t deserve to be a cuckold. More than once, Vic is told that he’s a “good guy” who’s well-respected in the community. Not much is told about Melinda’s background (she’s an immigrant who can speak English and Spanish), but several scenes in the movie show that Melinda thinks that she’s quite the seductress.

In the beginning of the movie, it’s mentioned that a man named Martin McCrae, who was one of Melinda’s lovers, has been missing for the past several weeks. Friends and acquaintances of the Van Allen spouses are gossiping that Vic could have had something to do with the disappearance. At a friend’s house party, where Melinda has invited Joel, the gossip goes into overdrive after Vic and Joel have a private conversation in the kitchen, and Vic tells Joel that he killed Martin. Joel can’t tell if Vic is joking or not, but he takes Vic’s comments as a threat, and he quickly leaves the party. Word soon spreads that Vic made this “confession,” and more people in the community begin to wonder if Vic could have murdered Martin.

Before Joel moves to New Mexico because of a job offer, he’s invited to dinner at the house of Vic and Melinda. Vic seems to delight in making Joel uncomfortable with snide remarks. Vic also makes backhanded insults at Melinda. When Vic and Joel are alone together, Vic once again tells Joel that he killed Martin by hitting Martin on the head with a hammer. However, Vic tries to make light of uneasy comments that he makes, by trying to pass them off as misguided sarcasm. Vic’s passive-aggressiveness is an obvious sign that Melinda’s extramarital affairs bother him.

Someone who doesn’t take Vic’s wisecracks lightly is fiction author/screenwriter Don Wilson (played by Tracy Letts), who has recently moved to the area. Don has had middling success by selling a few screenplays that haven’t been made into movies yet. One of these screenplays is about a man (whom Don based on his own personality/background) who uncovers a murder conspiracy in his town.

Vic and Melinda meet Don and Don’s much-younger wife Kelly Wilson (played by Kristen Connolly) at an outdoor party attended by many of the Van Allen couple’s friends. Don likes noir mysteries, so he fancies himself to be an amateur detective. Throughout the movie, Don lets it be known to anyone who’ll listen, including Vic, that he suspects that Vic has something to do with what happened to Martin, whose murdered body is later found shot to death.

Vic’s reputation appears to be saved when another man (who’s never seen in the movie) is arrested for Martin’s murder. However, Martin isn’t the only lover of Melinda’s who ends up dead. It’s enough to say that who’s responsible for the crimes is revealed about halfway through the movie. But even if that information didn’t happen until the end of the film, there are too many obvious clues. The only mystery in the story is if the guilty party will be caught.

One of the biggest failings of “Deep Water” is how it reveals almost nothing about how and why Vic and Melinda fell in love with each other, or even how long they’ve been married. Without this context, it might be difficult for a lot of viewers to care about this couple. Vic and Melinda’s marriage is presented as just a blank void, dressed up with a superficial parade of parties, squabbling and occasional sex. (Affleck and de Armas were a couple in real life when this movie was made, but they’ve since had a breakup that reportedly wasn’t very amicable.)

Vic and Melinda tell each other “I love you” several times, but viewers don’t see any credible passion or respect between these two spouses. The only thing that viewers will find out about what retired Vic likes to do in his free time at home is that he hangs out with his pet snails that he keeps in an aquarium room. The snails are supposed to be symbolic of how Vic acts in his marriage to Melinda.

It could be a marriage of convenience. It could be that Vic and Melinda don’t want the hassle of getting a divorce. They are also devoted parents to Trixie—Vic is more patient with Trixie than Melinda is—and these spouses might not want their child to grow up with divorced parents.

Regardless of the reasons why Vic and Melinda have decided to stay married to each other, “Deep Water” is more concerned with staging repetitive scenes where Melinda tries to make Vic jealous with her lovers, and then she tries to take his mind off of her affairs by getting Vic to have sex with her. Melinda also makes rude comments to Vic such as: “Joel might be dumb, but he makes me enjoy who I am,” and “If you were married to anyone else, you’d be so fucking bored. You’d kill yourself.”

In one of the movie’s party scenes, Vic makes an attempt to show Melinda that he’s attractive to other women when he does something he almost never does at a party: He dances. And he asks Don’s wife Kelly to be his dance partner, as they twirl together and snuggle flirtatiously on the dance floor. Other people, including Melinda, notice the chemistry between Vic and Kelly. Predictably, Melinda gets jealous and tries to re-assert her status as the most desirable and sexiest woman in Vic’s life.

In addition to the superficiality of Vic and Melinda’s marriage, another aspect of “Deep Water” that makes it look phony is that the movie repeatedly tells viewers that Vic is supposed to be very rich, but Vic and Melinda apparently have no house servants, since no servants are ever seen working for this family. Melinda does the family’s cooking, which is not entirely unrealistic for someone of her marital wealth. However, Melinda being the family cook doesn’t ring true when Melinda comes across as a pampered trophy wife who can stay out all night and party with her lovers whenever she feels like it. It wouldn’t have that been hard to cast a few people as background extras to portray servants, since it’s hard to believe that Melinda and/or Vic do their own housecleaning and upkeep of their large home.

An underdeveloped characteristic of “Deep Water” that should have been explored in a more meaningful way is how some people tend to think that those who are wealthy are automatically better than people who aren’t wealthy. In the scene where Don meets Vic for the first time, Don impolitely tells Vic that Vic is probably the person most likely to have done something harmful to Martin. Grant, who is Vic’s most loyal friend, tries to diffuse the tension by smiling and saying: “The moral of the story is Vic is a genius. And he’s rich as fuck.”

Grant’s comment is a reflection of how some people think that being smart and wealthy is the equivalent of being a “good person,” without taking into account that being a “good person” has nothing to do with how much intelligence or money someone has. This false equivalence is a huge dismissal of core values that define people’s true characters and personalities. “Deep Water” seems to make a half-hearted attempt to show how some people are more likely to excuse or overlook bad conduct from someone who is intelligent and rich, but the movie ultimately takes the lazy route by just going for cheap thrills that have been in similar movies.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the cast members’ performances, but there’s nothing that will make viewers feel any real emotional connection to any of these characters. Affleck and de Armas, regardless of their real-life romantic relationship while filming this movie, don’t have much that’s compelling about how they portray Vic and Melinda. After all, Affleck has played many privileged jerks on screen, while de Armas often has the role of a character who uses sex or sex appeal to get what she wants.

A chase scene toward the end of “Deep Water” is extremely hokey and not very believable. “Deep Water” was already paddling around in a sea of mediocrity for most of the movie. But by the time the movie reaches its terrible ending, it ruins any chances that “Deep Water” could have been a “guilty pleasure” thriller.

Hulu will premiere “Deep Water” on March 18, 2022.

Review: ‘All Roads to Pearla,’ starring Alex MacNicoll and Addison Timlin

October 23, 2020

by Carla Hay

Alex MacNicoll and Addison Timlin in “All Roads to Pearla” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

“All Roads to Pearla”

Directed by Van Ditthavong

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in Texas, the crime drama “All Roads to Pearla” has a predominantly white cast (with a few Latinos and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A senior in high school falls for a prostitute, who gets him mixed up in her criminal activities. 

Culture Audience: “All Roads to Pearla” will appeal primarily to people who like non-linear, muddled, noirish dramas with vague endings.

Alex MacNicoll (center) and Paige McGarvin (left) in “All Roads to Pearla” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

The crime drama “All Roads to Pearla” begins with an ambiguous scene and ends on an ambiguous scene. If you hate movies that end on a cliffhanger, and there’s almost no chance that the movie is getting a sequel, then it’s best to avoid watching “All Roads to Pearla.” It’s a movie that tries very hard to be gritty and sleek at the same time, yet it comes up short when it comes to overall storytelling.

“All Roads to Pearla” (formerly titled “Sleeping in Plastic”) is the first feature film from writer/director Van Ditthavong, who uses a lot of quick-cutting, back-and-forth editing techniques to attempt to make the story more of a mystery than it actually is and to give the movie a more suspenseful tone. Just as viewers get settled into watching what’s going on in a scene, the movie cuts away to show what’s happening at the same time somewhere else. There are also many flashbacks, so viewers have to pay attention to piece together the whole story. But even then, the puzzle ends up incomplete. What the movie really comes down to is a not-very-original concept of a young man who’s led astray by a femme fatale.

The movie’s protagonist is Brandon Bell (played by Alex MacNicoll), who’s in his last year at Lakeside High School in an unnamed suburb in Texas. Brandon is a wrestler on the school’s team, which is led by tough-but-motivational Coach Baker (played by Nick Chinlund), who considers Brandon to be a one of the best members of the team. Brandon is a loner who has an unhappy home life: His father abandoned the family, his younger brother has died, and his emotionally abusive, alcoholic mother Pearla (played by Morgana Shaw) blames Brandon for everything that’s gone wrong in her life.

The movie opens with a naked teenage boy running through a field into an open road and getting accidentally hit and killed by a car. Who is this boy and why was he running naked outside? The movie takes a long and muddled time to get some answers to that question, but the film is mainly preoccupied with showing Brandon’s dangerous attraction to a local prostitute whose name also happens to be the same as his mother’s: Pearla.

When Brandon first meets Pearla (played by Addison Timlin), who’s about the same age as Brandon, he doesn’t know that she’s a sex worker. He sees her while they’re both in a grocery store, and their eyes briefly lock in the way that indicates there’s an immediate attraction between them. After Brandon leaves with his grocery items and gets in his truck to leave, Pearla approaches him and starts up a flirtatious conversation with Brandon.

He’s so awed by her that he doesn’t even ask what her name is, but he tells her his name. She asks Brandon if he wants to make some easy money: For $50, she wants Brandon to give her a ride to “meet a friend” and wait for her for about an hour. It sounds suspicious, and Brandon doesn’t say yes right away. However, he and Pearla exchange phone numbers in case he changes his mind.

Someone at the grocery store who’s noticed this attraction between Brandon and Pearla is a cashier named Ellie (played by Paige McGarvin), who happens to be a classmate of Brandon’s. The next day in school, Ellie warns Brandon to stay away from the teenage girl he met in the parking lot. Ellie tells Brandon that this girl is a troublemaker who was caught shoplifting in the store and her reaction at getting caught was to throw a violent temper tantrum. Ellie doesn’t sugarcoat what she thinks of this mystery wild child: “She’s crazy.”

Brandon’s response is to ask Ellie on a date to go to the movies with him. But it’s clear from the time that Ellie and Brandon spend together that although she might be romantically attracted to him, he only wants her to be his platonic friend. Brandon is very intrigued by the girl he met in the grocery store parking lot, so he calls her and agrees to be her driver for the agreed-upon fee.

When they meet for the second time, Brandon asks her what her name is. When she tells him her name is Pearla, he mentions the strange coincidence that his mother’s name is also Pearla. Brandon makes it clear that he doesn’t have a good relationship with his mother. Pearla also comes from a broken home and she’s an only child. She has a cocaine habit, but Brandon doesn’t indulge in any drug taking when Pearl offers him some coke.

Brandon quickly figures out, based on Pearla’s instructions, that she’s a prostitute. When he asks her directly if she’s a hooker, all she will say is “I help people sleep at night.” After she comes back from the first place where Brandon dropped her off, she asks him to make two more stops. He’s reluctant at first, until she increases her payment to $100.

At one of the stops, Brandon finds out that he knows one of Pearla’s customers because he immediately recognizes the house where this person lives. Brandon becomes a Peeping Tom and looks in the bedroom window where Pearla and the customer are. And this customer has a dirty secret that Brandon discovers, because he can see what’s about to happen with this customer and Pearla before the lights get turned off.

When the sex session is over, the customer goes outside the house and sees that Brandon is Pearla’s driver. The customer and Brandon both look at each other that says in an unspoken way, “We both know this secret. Now what are you going to do about it?” Later, when Brandon sees this person again and tries to mention what he saw that night, the other person pretends that it didn’t even happen.

Meanwhile, Pearla is definitely not a “hooker with a heart of gold.” She’s in cahoots with her pimp Oz Bacco (played by Dash Mihok) and Oz’s muscleman Teddy (played by Marcus M. Mauldin) to rob her clients. After she ends a sex session with a client, who is usually caught off guard, she makes sure the door is unlocked so that Oz and Teddy can immediately invade the place and rob the client.

In the beginning of the movie, this type of robbery takes place at motel where Cowboy Loy (played Corin Nemec), one of Pearla’s customers, is robbed and assaulted by Oz and Teddy, who wear full face masks during these crimes. Their assault is so brutal that they nail one of Cowboy Loy’s hands to a dresser. But the money that was stolen in this robbery came from the business owned by Cowboy Loy and his business partner Mamo (played Tina Parker), and they’re both hell-bent on getting revenge. It’s pretty easy to see at this point where the movie is going to go.

Brandon and Pearla become lovers, and he gets more caught up in trying to be her protector, even though he’s aware that his life could be in danger. Brandon doesn’t have any specific goals on what he wants to do with his life after high school. He’s contemplating a possible move to El Paso to work on an oil rig, since he knows someone in El Paso who’s in that line of work. When he mentions it to Pearla, she says she would like to move to El Paso with him too if she can get enough money.

When someone like Pearla tells someone like Brandon, “I love you,” she doesn’t really mean it. It’s just her way of saying what Brandon wants to hear so that she can further manipulate him into doing what she wants. Brandon naïvely thinks that this prostitute with a cocaine addiction and a domineering pimp will just be able quit her criminal activities and move to El Paso with him when the time is right. But criminals like Pearla and Oz are too addicted to making money through illegal activity to suddenly “go straight.” Will Brandon be collateral damage?

Although “All Roads to Pearla” starts out promising, the movie quickly devolves in the last third of the story into a violent mess. MacNicoll and Timlin are very good in their roles as mismatched lovers Brandon and Pearla, but the movie’s supporting characters are written and performed as two-dimensional characters or borderline caricatures. Mihok as Oz is particularly over-the-top in his villainous role, but in an annoying way, not an entertaining way.

And about the sexual secret that Brandon knows about that’s very scandalous: The person who has the secret reacts in a fairly predictable way when it looks like someone might reveal this secret. “All Roads to Pearla” tries to go for a modern noir vibe, but it mishandles the “mystery” elements of the story with too many confusing flashbacks and that still don’t tell enough of a backstory to make this a well-rounded thriller.

The best scenes in the movie are those that involve Brandon’s dysfunctional home life. A vicious verbal argument that Brandon has with his mother is well-acted and very realistic. And there are hints, but not enough disclosure, about the death of Brandon’s younger brother that has caused so much turmoil in his family. The romance between Brandon and Pearla is utterly predictable because it’s been done so many other times before in movies that have femme fatales who lure gullible men into a life of crime.

Sometimes a movie’s mediocre acting or choppy direction can be forgiven if the overall story is intriguing and told in an original way. But it’s hard to like a movie that leaves major issues unresolved by the end of the film. In that respect, “All Roads to Pearla” is a movie that ends up leaving viewers feeling stranded and conned.

Gravitas Ventures released “All Roads to Pearla” in select U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on September 25, 2020.

Copyright 2017-2024 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX