Mark Reviews Movies: MOBILE HOMES

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 25, 2018

The three central characters of Mobile Homes—a makeshift family of a young mother, her 8-year-old son, and her boyfriend, who has adopted the kid—depend upon each other. The mother needs the boyfriend to run various, illegal enterprises, so that they can have even a little bit of money to stay in motel rooms. The boyfriend needs her, because she's sensible enough to keep the scams working. The kid, obviously, needs parents, although it's very likely that he doesn't need these particular parents.

Theirs is not an enviable living, but it'll have to do. Such is the life into which they've fallen, and writer/director Vladimir de Fontenay spends about half of the film watching as they fall deeper into this pit of poverty, recklessness, and co-dependence. At times, the material seems contrived, but beneath the sometimes wandering and calculated narrative, there is a degree of honesty about the dynamics of these relationships.

The mother is Ali (Imogen Poots), who gave birth to her son Bone (Frank Oulton) in the back of a truck and hasn't settled since then. Her boyfriend Evan (Callum Turner) is the sort of guy who's only reliable in his unreliability, but he makes some money, selling stolen merchandise and raising roosters for fights. The portrait of the three is of people who have never known anything else, so they keep at it, hoping to afford a home one day, as if that will change anything.

The second half gives Ali a chance to escape this lifestyle. After she and Bone hitch a ride in a mobile home, they end up under the sympathetic eye of Robert (Callum Keith Rennie), who runs a business building the homes. He gives Ali a job. She reluctantly but quickly takes to it. That's when Evan shows up again, and Ali falls into her old habits, as if nothing has changed.

It's tragic because of the cycle in which they're caught, and it's doubly so because they have grown accustomed to that cycle and each other. Poots' performance is especially good in communicating that second point. Her character doesn't necessarily evolve, because, even in the earlier scenes of Mobile Homes, we can see that Ali could have made something of herself under the right circumstances. The real growth for the character is in understanding that it might be too late—but only for her.

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