Morning
Opening Night Film
Reviewed by Alicia Glass
Studio: Red Rover Films
Director: Leeland Orser
Review Rating: 7
After the tragic loss of their only child due to an accident, a husband and wife separate for a four-day journey of the exploration of grief in its myriad forms and ways.
We knew this wasn’t going to be a happy movie, despite it being the opening night film. Yet when I read the synopsis and was watching the director Leeland Orser field questions before the film started, I was holding out hope for some manner of light in the darkness. It was answered in a kind of roundabout way, more on that later.
So the two main leads in the movie, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Leeland Orser, are married in real life. I’ve seen Tripplehorn pull off the battered soul woman in other powerhouses such as Big Love, and this movie is no exception. Orser is a fine actor himself, if a bit subdued and therefore surprising when he screams. His character, the husband, barely has a handful of lines in the entire movie. We have Laura Linney, who I’ve always liked, as the comforting grief counselor the wife eventually finds. Elliot Gould stars as the physical doctor, or M.D., that wife Alice originally wanted to go to. And Charlie McDermott brings a few awkward scenes as the neighbors son who tries to help.
It’s not the actors, they’re fine and they deliver a disturbingly real performance. It’s the movie itself, the subject matter of the sudden accidental death of a child, and it seems to me everyone’s kind of pussyfooting around that. I know the focus is supposed to be on the parents and their grief, but making an entire movie out of their grieving process is like spending an hour or two watching a flinch, or a wince. It’s almost like we the audience have violated something intensely private; I’m failing to understand why this sort of thing needs to be shared in feature film format. I’m going to reluctantly give the movie 7 boxes of tissues, I felt like I needed them by the end. Orser is a fine director, if nothing else.
Check out the Trailer –
Tags: charlie mcdermott, elliot gould, jeanne tripplehorn, laura linney, leeland orser, morning, morning 2010, opening night film, san diego film festival
