Cast: Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Kaitlyn Dever
Director: Destin Cretton
Country: USA
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here
Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage of the Locarno International Film Festival. For more information on the festival visit pardolive.ch and follow the Locarno International Film Festival on Twitter at @FilmFestLocarno.
Ensemble comedy abounds in American independent offering Short Term 12, writer/director Destin Cretton’s sophomore effort after the ill-received I Am Not a Hipster. Riding atop a high wave of appreciation from its SXSW debut, where it took both jury and audience awards, it’s a crowd-pleaser by default rather than design: the notes it hits are struck without sentiment, yet ring with the truths of life; the themes on which Cretton touches are the stuff of universal experience, unearthed almost incidentally. Emotional manipulation is a tool nowhere to be found in Cretton’s belt; his is a sturdy craftsmanship, an economic and ergonomic direction that manages, all the while, a stirring aesthetic finesse.
Terrific though the cast as a whole may be, there’s no denying that this is the Brie Larson show. She takes her character and flies, soaring to searing emotional heights without ever seeming to leave the ground, such are the roots of realism integral to this portrayal.
The microcosmic society of a foster care facility is the universe that occupies Cretton’s concern, the centre of which is the young Grace, whose relationship with her wards seems equally akin to a mother and an older sister. She’s a quiet character, clearly burdened with a difficult life of her own, compelled to provide these kids with the love and support they evidently lacked elsewhere. Cretton makes major strides in constructing the character as both the emotional core of the story and its most stoic structure; the tension between her insistence to her charges that they much always be open and her own closed-off demeanour form the basis of the movie’s drama. It’s surrounded by a comforting cushion of comedy, though, its laughs reliably delivered by its reckonable ensemble.
Terrific though the cast as a whole may be, there’s no denying that this is the Brie Larson show. She takes her character and flies, soaring to searing emotional heights without ever seeming to leave the ground, such are the roots of realism integral to this portrayal. It’s far from an unfamiliar character, this concerned care worker with a dark background of her own, but the freshness is to be found in the depth of Larson’s work, the way her shy smiles mask erstwhile sadness, the deep discomfort crying out from those ground-gazing eyes. To say that she carries the film is less to suggest that its bulk goes unsupported than to point out the striking strength of her work: it’s not merely idealistic to imagine the movie would still manage on the power of her work even if Cretton’s failed in itself.
But Cretton is no failure, and his work supplements Larson’s with a synchronicity that allows his film to find a wealth of emotional impact. Shooting with Red Epic, he favours a shallow focus approach that sees these characters as figures cast out from their backgrounds, never quite comfortable among the world they find themselves wandering. It’s a common stylistic approach, the over-saturation of which has perhaps diminished the psychological connotations of its effect. Cretton reclaims them with ease; the blurry figures who move behind Grace’s back are as the emotional ghosts of the past made manifest. He balances his tones with commendable skill, somehow managing to remain consummately serious with this character’s issues while maintaining all the while a strong current of often almost vulgar comedy.
Shooting with Red Epic, [Cretton] favours a shallow focus approach that sees these characters as figures cast out from their backgrounds, never quite comfortable among the world they find themselves wandering. It’s a common stylistic approach, the over-saturation of which has perhaps diminished the psychological connotations of its effect.
It’s overzealous to deny the scales don’t at least temporarily tip: there’s a tendency in the drama to overstretch itself, loading the movie with more conflict than it needs. It’s never clearer than in Grace’s relationship with her goofy boyfriend Mason, which Cretton builds with no fewer than three conflict crescendos that culminate in an overbearing sequence of argument scenes. Larson and John Gallagher Jr. work hard to craft a romance muddied with mistrust; for Cretton to give them too much material is, in some respects, mistrustful in itself. Still, he’s talented enough to recognise the great work they do to elevate already special material and complement their efforts in return; though Short Term 12 turns on familiar points, it does so with an earnest honesty, a darkness so truthful it’s positively uplifting.
[notification type=”star”]80/100 ~ GREAT. Though Short Term 12 turns on familiar points, it does so with an earnest honesty, a darkness so truthful it’s positively uplifting. [/notification]
