Shakespeare never gets old.
(That said, I’ll get back to The Bard in a moment.)
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| Dan (Keith Kupferer) desperately needs to find a way to bond with his out-of-control daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), but remains oblivious to the fact that she isn't their little family's biggest problem. |
O’Sullivan also wrote the wholly persuasive script, which never hits a wrong note. The performances are equally sublime, with all major roles played by veterans of the Windy City’s theater circuit, which O’Sullivan knows quite well.
At the risk of succumbing to cliché, this film will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.
Dan (Keith Kupferer) is a city construction worker, currently part of a crew tearing up a Waukegan street in front of a dilapidated storefront theater. The noise is deafening, to the point that Dan gets a tongue-lashing from spunky Rita (Dolly De Leon), who’s connected with whatever is going on inside the theater.
His bewildered lack of reaction is typical of the man we watched rise earlier that day, heading off to work as Oklahoma’s “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” plays in the background: as upbeat as Dan’s demeanor is downbeat. He seems to carry the weight of the world on his massive shoulders; his expression is blank, his manner resigned, his emotions so repressed that we cannot imagine him smiling.
His work shift is interrupted when he and his wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen), are called to the school where their teenage daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), once again has misbehaved: this time to the ragged edge of expulsion. In several swift scenes, with emotionally jagged strokes, Mallen Kupferer depicts a girl in full-blown emotional meltdown: disrespectful, profane, erratic and given to savage outbursts.
We quickly learn, via O’Sullivan’s deft touch with sparse dialogue, that Dan and Sharon are at wit’s end; they’ve spent time on patience, counseling and other efforts to “fix” Daisy, while paying insufficient attention to their own fraying marriage.
But as it turns out, Daisy isn’t actually the problem.
Vague references to upcoming “deposition appointments,” and the blanket of misery that covers this family like a shroud, point to Something Ominous: a recent event that left them shattered, and unable to move forward. Details come in fits and starts, as the story continues: not because O’Sullivan is being elusive, but because it’s organic to the way these people behave.
A day or two later, Rita happens to be on hand when Dan loses his cool, and erupts in rage against an arrogant motorist. Shaken by his misbehavior, unable to continue working, Dan numbly follows Rita into the theater, where director Lanora (Hanna Dworkin) is leading a gaggle of local amateurs in a read-through of Romeo and Juliet, in preparation for mounting a production.
Dan can’t fathom what he’s doing in this room, but Rita — a tough-as-nails ex-Broadway actress, and self-described bitch — sits him down, tosses him a script, and demands that he read the role of Lord Capulet. Sensing that she’s not to be denied, and encouraged by the others — whom Rita calls “an island of misfit toys” — Dan obliges, stumbling his way through unfamiliar words, and Shakespeare’s initially impenetrable cadence.
Despite himself, his curiosity aroused, Dan remains until the session concludes. Later, back at home, he asks Daisy if she’s familiar with the play. To his astonishment — and ours — she suddenly sparkles like a star gone nova, and rattles off memorized portions of a soliloquy.
This unexpected burst of enthusiasm is breathtaking; the next moment is even better, when she dials up “her favorite version” of the play on her laptop: Baz Luhrmann’s updated 1996 adaptation, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. The subsequent bit of father/daughter bonding is transcendent; it’s also one of the many little clues to what has happened, and will happen, that O’Sullivan sprinkle throughout her story.
(My assumption, when Daisy mentioned “favorite version,” was that we’d see moments of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film, with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey ... but of course that’s my generation’s Romeo and Juliet, not that of a contemporary teen.)
Dan returns to the theater each day — his outburst having resulted in suspension (one of O’Sullivan’s many shrewd uses of parallel structure) — and finds that he’s enjoying the camaraderie. These people view him solely as a construction guy, having no knowledge of his personal life, and whatever mars it.
“You know why I asked you to help?” Rita tells him, at one point. “It seemed like you might want a chance of being somebody else for awhile.”
When the youngest members of the company abruptly departs — no loss, as he’s a pretentious dilettante — Dan is reassigned the part of Romeo, opposite Rita’s Juliet. That elevates his discomfort level, because the role requires kissing, and make-believe intimacy ... and, well, that’s embarrassing, and way beyond his comfort zone.
Needless to say, he hasn’t told Sharon or Daisy about any of this.
Lanora, Rita and the others help Dan through the process, and — here’s where the story’s subtle intensity kicks in — by learning how to feign a play character’s emotional honesty, he gradually understands how to deal with his actual grief.
Many subsequent moments are touching, or humorous, or both. While driving home one evening, Dan begins mumbling memorized lines to himself: a genuinely adorable moment. Alternatively, the way he takes the rhythm of Shakespeare’s lines too much to heart, at one point, is laugh-out-loud hilarious.
I hesitate to say anything else, because much of this film’s charm comes from little revelations, and glimpses into the souls of Dan, Sharon and Daisy. The eventual casting of Mercutio proves pivotal, after which this film becomes remarkable. And magical.
Kupferer, Mallen and Mallen Kupferer are persuasively intense and wholly natural as this fractured family, in part because — as their names reveal — they are an actual off-camera family, and also seasoned stage and film actors.
Kupferer nails Dan’s forlorn, repressed and initially helpless manner; watching him slowly blossom, under the delicate guidance of this film’s two directors, is breathtaking. Mallen is just as powerful, in her less showy role as Sharon: a wife and mother desperate to hold her family together, but realizing — her agonized silences speak volumes — that she’s losing the battle.
Mallen Kupferer stood out in a supporting role, in last year’s adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; she’s equally fine here. Another choice sequence involves a bit of karaoke; at this point we truly realize the source of Daisy’s bliss, and how she’d clearly be a knock-out kid, if she could find her way back to it.
De Leon, well remembered as the pivotal passenger ship’s maid in 2022’s Triangle of Sadness, is a feisty force of nature. O’Sullivan gives her all of the best one-liners, and De Leon delivers every one with maximum impact, while also demonstrating that Rita is sharply observant, sensitive and kind.
The endearingly quirky supporting “misfits” include the often wry Greg (Dexter Zollicoffer), the motherly Moira (Alma Washington), the congenial Jonah (H.B. Ward) and somewhat manic Lucian (Tommy Rivera-Vega). They’re all Chicago theater stalwarts, and I wish we could get to know them better; each is radiantly individual.
Events build to a marvelous conclusion: satisfying in every respect, and leaving us with the warmth of true “motion picture magic.”
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