A Country Called Home
“A Country Called Home” sees a lot of characters coming to terms with things. There’s a single dad whose ex-wife is an alcoholic and drug addict. They got married and had a kid right out of high school, and now he works long hours to support his son and his mom, who’s also an alcoholic. The mother just lost her common-law husband if you can even call it that when she’s still married to another man after he had a stroke from 40 years of heavy drinking.
The protagonist of “A Country Called Home” is the dead man’s daughter. She left him as soon as she could, and now she has come to Texas from Los Angeles, where she lives, to bury the man she has spent most of her life hating.
Also there’s a transgender singing cowboy who, in his first scene, gets a beer bottle thrown at him for trying to sing in a local dive bar. Keeping with the theme of people slowly killing themselves, the troubadour’s mother who makes her first appearance in a hospital bed in diabetic coma is eating her way to an early death on account of a diet consisting almost entirely of unhealthy food.
The easy critique here is that director Anna Axster (making her feature debut) and Jim Beggarly’s screenplay provides too many characters; but that’s not quite right. It’s clear that Axster and Beggarly have given some thought about how these characters are connected beyond the informal familial bonds they share.
Ellie (Imogen Poots) is the daughter of the dead patriarch. She hasn’t seen or spoken to her father in years, and their old man has been all but written off by Elllie’s older brother (Shea Whigham), who believes their father is dead but “they just haven’t gotten around to burying him yet” (the movie eventually reveals why his children despise him, although it’s not much of a surprise). When her dad’s “wife” Amanda (Mary McCormack) calls to tell her that he has died, Ellie comes to Texas to make the funeral arrangements.
There she meets her unofficial stepmother, a woman who seems perfectly nice and accommodating until she is faced with any inconvenience to her daily routine of heavy drinking. Her son Jack (Ryan Bingham) tries to keep the family together, which has become more difficult since his mother and Ellie’s father moved in with Jack and his son Tommy (Presley Jack Bowen).
Through Amanda, the screenplay gives an idea of what Ellie’s father might have been like; and through Jack, Axster and Beggarly show us something about what Ellie’s life could have been like if she hadn’t left her own family situation. Jack is essentially stuck by duty the same way that Ellie was when she was younger.
There is something oppressively cyclical about these relationships. They stand on their own, which makes it all the more unfortunate that eventually Jack becomes a potential romantic interest for Ellie, who has an uncaring boyfriend (Josh Helman) at home; this development undercuts the more interesting thematic connection between the two characters.
And this brings us to the character of Reno (Mackenzie Davis), a transgender musician. She and Ellie quickly become friends, and while the character’s presence here doesn’t seem to fit at first, it soon becomes clear why he’s included. He is yet another person who has been kept from reaching his potential by the self destructive behavior of someone close to him. Of all these characters, Reno is the most interesting one because even though he seems somewhat out of place, he also appears as though he wants more than any other character does or knows how to get out from under his circumstances.
These people crash together in their shared unhappiness. The emotional connections between them are there for Axster and Beggarly to see, but increasingly it feels like they’re being charted toward specific resolutions by the screenplay. For instance: The first time we see Ellie’s father’s station wagon, it might as well be a Road Runner cartoon signpost pointing toward this movie’s inevitable final shot.
The third act in particular is an uncomfortable blend of broad comedy and pathos. It’s a willful change of tone that takes the story toward its more hopeful ending but winds up trying too hard.
A memorial service turns into a full scale brawl; Reno gets back at a storeowner who won’t serve him with some elaborate practical joke that only provides an unnecessary moment away for both these characters and this story before everything conveniently falls into place. Poor June Squibb playing Ellie’s biological grandmother with tender conviction shouldn’t have been asked to take one pratfall too many on her way through that hospital door again when she slips on those marbles.
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