Last year, I reviewed a film by Rebecca Daly that premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival called
Mammal. It took a year for it to become available to Americans via Netflix. This film by Daly premiered at the 2017 Goteborg Film Festival, but again has taken about a year before those in the United States get easy access, thanks to Breaking Glass Pictures. Both films have the same director but they also have the same co-writer, Glenn Montgomery. Both films are similar in a lot of ways in terms of behind the scenes information, but also in terms of in front of the scenes information.
Both are about a white, teenage boy who is homeless and who is taken in by someone else. In
Mammal, the boy is taken in by a woman for an eventual sexual tryst in the city. Here, the boy in question is taken in by a religious community deep in the country. Both films feature minimal dialogue. This one has a bit more due to all the church sermons. Both films have plenty of scenes with people in water. Both films boast a mother who loses a child and both films end with purposes that are more elusive than solid.
Vincent Romeo stars as Tom, the aforementioned teenage boy who is dirty and injured as he emerges out of the woods one day and wanders onto a farm. He discovers that the farm is inhabited by a group of people who are seemingly Mennonites. They are welcoming of him, if a bit suspicious. Tom though never reveals where he comes from or what happened to him to cause him to arrive there. Tom merely says he's an orphan and not much more about his past is told or explored.
Normally, this might be a criticism, but Tom being mysterious is integral to what Daly is trying to convey. Through a series of circumstances, Tom gets to be regarded among the people on the farm as a kind of Christ-like figure. It's not to say that Tom is Jesus Christ or the Second Coming, but the people in the community come to feel that he is and Daly makes very similar allusions. That in and of itself is very intriguing, but unfortunately Daly doesn't do much with it.
Aside from people being wary of him and by the end worshiping him, there isn't much drama to be found here. The closest the movie comes to legitimate drama is an issue of medical care. Tom is allowed to stay in the house of a middle-age couple named Hans and Maria. Hans and Maria also live with Hans' parents because Hans' elderly mother is very sick. She's bedridden and practically catatonic. Hans' father wants to take her to a hospital, but Hans says no and insists on prayer only.
Yet, there isn't a lot of push and pull in this conflict. It's also not clear what Tom's presence has to do with this conflict, such that it is. There's some suggestion that Tom is a healer or a possible cure for Hans' mother, but the movie doesn't make much hay about it, or any hay at all really. A movie like this might examine faith, religiosity or even fundamentalism, but if Daly does want to examine those things, it's so subtle, as if only to come in quick glances on actors' faces. Everyone is devout in the beginning. Everyone is devout by the end, so one wonders if Daly herself is devout and only questioning things in the slightest of ways.
Not Rated but contains full-frontal male nudity and bloody images.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 40 mins.
Available on DVD and VOD.
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