SUNCOAST - Mark Reviews Movies

Suncoast, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 8, 2024

Seventeen-year-old Doris (Nico Parker) knows her older brother is going to die. She has known it for a while now, as soon as the cancer infecting his brain became impossible to treat, so she does what she can for him. Apart from going to school, watching over and caring for her brother make up the extent of Doris' life, and she has become so used to the facts of his illness, her role as caretaker, and the inevitability of the brother's death that none of it seems to faze her.

That's the setup of Suncoast, the debut film of writer/director Laura Chinn that, based on a memorial at the end, comes from a personal place for the filmmaker. The core of this story is filled with knowing, aching authenticity in the way it portrays how something so inherently difficult can become common, how the routine of being caught up in a loved one's illness so thoroughly comes to define a person's life, and, ultimately, how there's no way to truly prepare for the end of this situation—no matter how certain it is.

Despite the weighty subject, what's most impressive about Chinn's film is the balance of tone here. It is fundamentally sad, to be sure, because the story never lets us forget or ignore that Doris is always amidst the final days of her brother's life, just waiting for those last hours, minutes, and seconds. As that's happening in the background or in the immediate foreground, though, this teenage girl desperately wants to be just an ordinary teenage girl. As callous as it might sound, the brother's arrival at a hospice facility at the story's start might allow her the chance to be as close to a "normal" teen as possible.

There is, of course, nothing cynical or uncaring about that, but try telling that to the siblings' widowed mother Kristine (Laura Linney), who wants to spend every available moment with her dying son and can't comprehend why her daughter wouldn't want to do the same. Their relationship, as well as the distinct ways in which the two characters are grieving and refuse to acknowledge that reality, is specifically and painfully presented here.

They are both going through the same thing, but neither can really see that. After all, the mother has certain expectations for what's supposed to happen under these circumstances, while the daughter simply cannot bring herself to meet those expectations any longer.

We come to understand both of these characters, what they're going through, and why they can't help but to butt heads so frequently and, at times, with such animosity. The depiction of the relationship is so brutally honest, so sympathetically thorny, and so precisely performed by Parker and Linney that the story doesn't need anything else, really, to be effective.

Chinn does give us more, though, and those elements are a decidedly mixed bag. There's Doris going through a fairly standard coming-of-age tale as she attempts to juggle new friends and what Kristine wants her to do for her brother. This is at the heart of the film, because Doris has never known such a life and is dealing with the worry that she might not be capable of experiencing it. She starts talking to some classmates, offers them her house for an upcoming party (because her mother has decided to live in her son's room at the facility), and finds herself the accidental center of the group's social gatherings.

Some of this seems doomed for failure or heartbreak, but one of the more admirable characteristics of the story is how Chinn refuses to let seemingly obvious conflicts come into play here. Yes, Doris' new friends—namely Laci (Daniella Taylor), Brittany (Ella Anderson), Megan (Ariel Martin), and Nate (Amarr), who comes to share a mutual crush on her—come from a more well-to-do socioeconomic bracket and get a little too caught up in gossip, but they're good people at heart. There's a real warmth to these budding bonds, and considering everything Doris has gone and is currently going through, it's simply nice to see her own compassion, intelligence, and beyond-her-years maturity rewarded in such a simple way.

The other major subplot, though, attempts to tackle too much for what's already tricky material. By chance, Doris' brother is in the same hospice center as Terri Schiavo, whose tragic health condition became the source of more than a decade of legal battles, as well as a national debate about the nature of life and the right to die.

Protestors are always present outside the facility. Doris and her classmates discuss the case in their ethics class at a Christian high school, and she becomes unlikely pals with Paul (Woody Harrelson), a widower who has devoted himself to participating in the protests to keep Schiavo on a feeding tube, despite her apparent wishes and the decision of her husband.

The best that can be said of this part of the narrative is that the relationship with Paul gives Doris a platform to say what she thinks, without the worries of upsetting her mother or feeling weird around her friends, and that Harrelson serves as a strong-minded but tender sounding board for those thoughts. However, it's a heavy ethical debate seemingly forced into Doris and Kristine's situation, which doesn't require one, and maybe, that's Chinn's point. Either way, the inclusion of the Schiavo case comes across as a distraction from the film's obvious strengths.

Those strengths, though, are notable in how candid Suncoast is about grieving and trying to live in the shadow of loved one's imminent death. Overall, it's a considered, warm, and poignant film.

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