Mark Reviews Movies: THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF WOLFBOY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 29, 2020

A young teenager doesn't want much—love, family, friends, some sense of oneself in the small part of life and the world in which he or she is a part. All of these desires, though, are difficult to achieve if a person thinks oneself or others believe that someone is, above all else, "different." For Paul (Jaeden Martell), the protagonist of The True Adventures of Wolfboy, there's something that makes him obviously and unmistakably different: He has thick hair all over his face and body, giving him the superficial appearance of an animal.

This, as one could imagine, has resulted in Paul being gawked at by strangers and relentlessly mocked by his peers, and those results have led him to be shy, aloof, and isolated. Paul doesn't go out much, and when he does, he wears a ski mask to cover his face.

In the movie's opening scene, Paul's father Denny (Chris Messina) has brought his son to a traveling carnival for the boy's birthday. Even with the usually sacred and unbreakable protection of an accompanying parent, Paul's classmates don't hold back on the teasing. They suggest that the boy's mother is a dog and ask Denny what that experience was like.

Trying to move past it, Denny insists that his son take off his mask, in order to stand up confident and proud in line for a ride, but the inevitable stares shatter Paul again. He runs home to be alone and miserable, as he is certain the rest of his life will be.

There is such loneliness, cruelty, and righteous anger in the early scenes of director Martin Krejcí's film that we're not sure how—or even if—these qualities of the story will ever fade or lift. Olivia Dufault's screenplay frames this story as a kind of modern, real-life fairy tale, with chapter breaks, accompanied by fanciful artwork of Paul as a heroic figure encountering various fantasy creatures, announcing some new adventure in the boy's trek to discover his origins and, perhaps, the secret of why he looks the way he does. It helps ease the troubling sense of continuous misery, for sure, because fairy tales, no matter how grim or hopeless as they may seem throughout, must reach a happy ending.

The story, as the title outright states and the framing device suggests, does have an adventure—one that will take Paul from his small town, to meet assorted people and find various places, and ultimately to an unidentified location deep into Pennsylvania (which kind of sounds like a mystical land when it's stated or asked about in a certain tone). After receiving a map to the place, sent with a request to meet at a specific address, Paul is sure that the answers to at least some of his questions will be answered.

The map and the note were, after all, sent by his mother, who left the family for uncertain reasons to an unknown place immediately after Paul was born. That's the less painful version of the story. The truth, of which Paul is certain, is that she left because of him, to a place that's as far away from him as possible.

Dufault's tale is as simple and familiar as a fairy tale, and that's its strength. Paul runs away from home. He encounters various people who use him for ill or want the pleasure of his company—out of the goodness of their hearts or because they, too, know the kind of pain that Paul has endured. He learns some lessons about others—how Mr. Silk (John Turturro), the owner of the traveling carnival ("the transitory entertainment business", as he loftily calls it), exploits Paul's desires for profit—and himself—how he's quick to assume the worst of people and behaves as if everyone is an enemy—and the universality of pain and feeling alone.

In that last category, two characters matter, one more than the other. Of primary importance is Aristiana (Sophie Giannamore), a teenage girl about Paul's age, whom our hero meets after spending a night hiding in the doghouse in her backyard. She performs a stage show at local bar, lip-syncing into a bubble-blowing microphone (The artwork and chapter title refer to her as a mermaid). Beneath that confident exterior, though, is the pain that Aristiana's mother has not and will not accept the fact that her daughter is transgender. Paul can understand a lot of this and, perhaps, see himself as more fortunate in some respects. His father has and continues to accept him as he is.

The other character is Rose (Eve Hewson), an enigmatic young woman who wears an eyepatch for a mysterious reason. The trio connect, travel, and, in order to celebrate Paul's birthday, rob convenience stores for party supplies. Meanwhile, Mr. Silk and a police detective (played by Michelle Wilson), alerted to Paul's disappearance by Denny, are following Paul's trail.

To describe where this adventures leads would be unfair (There's a minor twist involving the map) but also unnecessary. There is only one place the journey can end, so what can be said, though, is that the two key performances (from Chloë Sevigny and Stephen McKinley Henderson) in the climactic scene offer two different forms of emotional catharsis.

Some of this—from the title, to those chapter interludes, to the general eccentricity of these characters—may seem flippant, but The True Adventures of Wolfboy is a tale that's surprising in its emotional authenticity and generosity. It makes room for real pain, yes, but the film also allows its characters to share that pain and find some way to rise above it.

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