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MY ZOE
Director: Julie Delpy Cast: Julie Delpy, Richard Armitage, Daniel Brühl, Saleh Bakri, Gemma Arterton, Sophia Ally, Lindsay Duncan MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:40 Release Date: 2/26/21 (limited); 5/25/21 (digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 25, 2021 About half of My Zoe is a wrenching depiction of the slow death of a young child and the constant but evolving devastation suffered by the girl's family. The rest of writer/director/star Julie Delpy's movie is something else entirely, based on that grief—specifically, the denial of it—but raising moral and ethical questions that the filmmaker never confronts. Delpy plays Isabelle, the mother of Zoe (Sophia Ally) and the ex-wife of James (Richard Armitage), the girl's father. They have split custody, and Isabelle is trying to find a new job, as a scientific researcher (the first of a few subtle hints as to where this story eventually goes), without as many travel requirements. James, a controlling and manipulative man, insists that Zoe stay with him when Isabelle has her job interview. That night, as Isabelle and her boyfriend Akil (Saleh Bakri) sleep, something happens to Zoe. She won't wake up in the morning. She's rushed to the hospital. A doctor informs Isabelle that the girl has internal cranial bleeding, either from an aneurysm or an accident. Surgery stops the immediate cause, but Zoe has brain damage and is in a coma. This section of the movie is devastating, because Delpy presents it with cold, harsh honesty. There are little pieces of hope, always shattered with a clinical discussion. The exes keep fighting and blaming each other for what happened, but they both gradually realize that no argument and no assignment of guilt will change what's happening to their daughter. There's no miracle cure coming, and everyone just has to sit and watch, waiting for the inevitable. Delpy's approach is patient and observant in its depiction of lingering grief, so the movie's second half, which follows the extreme steps Isabelle takes after Zoe's medical crisis is finished, comes, not only as a surprise (There are subtle hints that the story is set in the future to slightly prepare us), but as a disappointing anticlimax. It involves a potential scientific breakthrough, possible by way of a scientist (played by Daniel Brühl) in Russia, who's a bit too quick to dismiss his ethical qualms. The whole of My Zoe bypasses much of what these characters discuss in the second section. The result is hollow on either a philosophical or—unfortunately, since the first half is so strong on that front—emotional level. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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