Mark Reviews Movies: PAPER SPIDERS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 6, 2021

It all starts with an apparent feud between neighbors. Dawn (Lili Taylor), a widow and the mother of a teenage girl, sees a moving truck blocking the driveway—an inconsiderate and rude situation. The truck, dropping something off at the neighbors' house, then hits a tree on Dawn's property, slicing through the bark. She storms out of the house to confront the neighbor, and upon returning, Dawn tells her daughter Melanie (Stefania Owen) that the man told her—in no uncertain and crude terms—to leave him alone. Dawn has had enough of this man, but she's also convinced he's not finished with her.

Co-writer/director Inon Shampanier's Paper Spiders begins simply and innocently—or at least that's how it seems from a very specific perspective. The point of view belong to Melanie, who has no reason to distrust or not believe her mother's claims. She saw the moving truck. She saw the cut left in the tree. She saw how upset Dawn was upon returning from the confrontation with the neighbor. There's no rationale to support a different story.

The truth, though, is much more complicated and distressing. The key to the screenplay, written by the director and his wife Natalie Shampanier, is that it doesn't try to evade or obfuscate that truth. Dawn is ill, convinced that there are forces—specifically, one person—in this world that have targeted her for some unknowable reason and with increasingly unbelievable methods. Melanie doesn't know how to help her mother, but she does know that the mother needs help.

The tragedy of this story is twofold. There's Dawn's situation, which doesn't need to be explained in terms of its heartbreak. She's a seemingly ordinary woman, living a seemingly ordinary life, who is slowly but unstoppably overtaken by delusions invented within her mind.

The film doesn't try to diagnose her, beyond giving her condition a name—persecutory delusional disorder. There's no specific event, since the tree incident—we learn—arrives after some time of Dawn experiencing these delusion, or particular trauma, since the daughter points out that her mother had been "quirky" even before the death of her husband and Melanie's father, that triggered her condition. It likely has always been there for Dawn. Perhaps circumstances have escalated the symptoms, or maybe she was better at hiding them. Either way, no one noticed or was willing to say anything aloud.

The other tragedy, upon which the Shampaniers' screenplay primarily focuses, belongs to Melanie, a teenager with dreams of becoming a doctor, of traveling across the country to her late father's alma mater, and of making a life for herself. There's real love between the daughter and mother, which seems like an odd thing to point out, except that so often are stories about families mired in conflict. Here, Melanie isn't trying to escape from home. She's just moving forward in life, and as painful as that is for Dawn, the mother doesn't hold that against Melanie.

Melanie is kind, compassionate, and understanding, and the conflict here is just how far those qualities will get her in trying to relate to, hold on to, and help Dawn, whose capacity to comprehend reality, as it truly is, keeps slipping further and further away from her. For a while, the film is good-humored, not in a way that it mocks Dawn or her mental illness, but in a way that reflects Melanie's understanding of her mother's condition. This is just a problem. Like any problem, it can be solved, and if anyone is going to be able to save Dawn from her circumstances, it has to be the woman's own daughter.

The Shampaniers genuinely understand and sympathize with this perspective. It may be naïve, but it comes from a place of real love. It may not be helping Dawn in any concrete or constructive way, but what else is Melanie, who has no one else but her mother to whom to turn, to do?

This story simply lives with these characters. Melanie tries to navigate school, her college ambitions, a new and also troubled boyfriend, and some kind of unofficial treatment for her mother, while Dawn becomes increasingly lost in her delusions, paranoia, and conviction that forces beyond her control are causing her real physical pain and mental strain.

Melanie's high school guidance counsellor (played by Michael Cryil Creighton) offers some advice, telling Melanie that socializing might help her mother. The daughter sets up Dawn with an online dating profile, and Dawn starts seeing a nice man named Howard (Tom Papa). Things seem fine enough that Melanie actually starts dating Daniel (Ian Nelson), a teen with a different set of problems—namely alcoholism. There's a certain, telling wisdom in the connection of Melanie's two, most significant relationships in this story. They inform us of Melanie's desire or, some may even say, need to help others. Owen's quiet, compelling performance tells that story, too.

Gradually, Dawn's delusions worsen. She's convinced the neighbor is spying on her, breaking into the house, and using some kind of device to give her headaches. Dawn even hires a private investigator (played by Max Casella) to keeps tabs on the unseen neighbor. The pressures of simultaneously trying to live her life and being there for her mother mount for Melanie, and any sense of the film's lighthearted tone dissipate. There are certain obstacles that no level of determination or love can overcome, and when those barriers arrive here, the characters collide into them with heartbreaking authenticity.

Paper Spiders treats mental illness with a notable degree of respect and thoughtfulness. Much of that has to do the filmmakers' determination to respect and empathize with these characters, living with and through the unknown and the uncertain together.

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