Ultra-naturalistic Black nuclear family drama, both granular and quotidian*, watches passively, mostly in short single-shot scenes, thru some tough times. With Dad serving a long jail term, Mom holds the family together with a decent waitressing job (later she’ll try to add another for more hours), her teenage boy leans toward the wrong crowd at school, and her little girl stays happy and oblivious to the narrow safety margin they tread. The son is the main focus of change, teetering on the cusp of either adulthood or thug-hood and feeling pushed by anyone who tries to step in and help. Including Mom’s new boyfriend. A charmer in some ways, his main attraction is sheer persistence (also the biggest turnoff). The positives and negatives only heightened when Mom gets pregnant by him, and the kid's absent father suddenly starts writing to his son, trying, from jail, to be a role model of what not to do. Not a good time for the son to take off after another fight with Mom, wandering in silent despair and landing in a gated community park where he feels threatened by an uncomfortable white family who basically tell him to get lost, provoking a quick overreaction which threatens to decide his future for him. Writer/director Antonio Méndez Esparza’s slow-burn approach takes a while to pull us in, but eventually gets the job done. (A home video release with subtitles might help. The largely improvised dialogue from a non-professional cast as tough to decipher as a North British police procedural.) But the film grows only more affecting as it goes along. And Regina Williams, who plays Mom, something of a real find; with a sideways glance lethal at 40 yards.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Long hoped to use ‘granular’ and ‘quotidian’ in the same sentence . . . and I promise never to do it again.
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