Jack and I really liked this story of Ray, a 16 year old transitioning from female to male, his single mother Maggie, and Maggie's mother Dolly, who lives with her life partner Frances. Don't let the date fool you--this was released this month, almost two years after its appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival AKA TIFF.
The cast is terrific with Elle Fanning (last blogged for 20th Century Women, which had some similarities to this) as troubled Ray, Naomi Watts (most recently in these pages for While We're Young) as compassionate yet ambivalent Maggie, Susan Sarandon (last in My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea) as foot-in-mouth Dolly, and Linda Emond (most recently in Indignation) as peacemaker Frances. Dolly provides enough humor that some critics have called this a dramedy. More on them in a moment.
This is director/co-writer Gaby Dellal's third time directing (I don't think I saw first feature, On a Clear Day (2005), and know I missed her second in 2011) and first feature script, co-written with Nikole Beckwith, who directed and wrote one other.
West Dylan Thordson, who wrote some of the songs for Joy, provides a lovely indie score, which can be streamed from spotify on this link.
A few months ago, I signed a petition on change.org to get the MPAA to rate the movie PG-13 instead of R (for language), so that teenagers could freely see it. It worked!
There's a bit of home-movie video that I thought might cause Motion Picture Motion Sickness, but the moments are brief and I was unaffected so fellow sufferers need not worry. Here's the running list anyway.
Speaking of the critics, they're mean, averaging 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and its audiences only 40. We think they're not just mean, they're wrong.
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