Mark Reviews Movies: WILDFLOWER

Wildflower, Momentum Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 16, 2023

Wildflower seems hesitant to tell the story it wants to tell. That's understandable, because director Matt Smukler's movie is a dramatization of the true story—"inspired" by it, as some opening text informs us—of a girl, each of whose parents has an intellectual or developmental disability. It's tough and touchy subject matter, to be sure, especially when the story does come from a real-life one (to whatever extent this one actually does) and when it comes to how the movie is going to set about depicting those parents.

Things could go terribly wrong, and if the movie possesses one quality that's both admirable and a major flaw, it's that Smukler and screenwriter Jana Savage seem to go out of their way to avoid letting things go in that direction. It's a movie that desperately doesn't want to offend, except to show how offensive certain people can be about the subject, but in evading the characters of the parents, the movie ends up seeming as if it isn't certain what story it's trying to tell or how to tell it.

We even get a gimmicky framing device that keeps the entire narrative at a certain distance. Our protagonist is Bea (Kiernan Shipka), who tells the story of her life as she's in a coma in a hospital bed, surrounded and visited by members of her family and the occasional friend. Savage half-heartedly tries to turn the circumstances of Bea's condition into a running mystery, but pretty quickly, it becomes clear that the coma is mostly an excuse of a reason for the character to explain her back story (even though the movie itself later gives one that's more believable—but less melodramatic).

Initially, Bea's story belongs to her parents, Derek (Dash Mihok) and Sharon (Samantha Hyde). Her father was involved in a car wreck with a drunk driver, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury, and her mother was born with a developmental disability that limited her intellectual development. The strangest element of this story is how the parents are treated simultaneously as the most important characters in it, apart from Bea, and as the ones whose experiences are of least interest to the filmmakers. Derek and Sharon meet, since they both live with parents near each other, and elope shortly after she asks him out on a date.

The couple's parents, save for Sharon's mother Peg (Jean Smart), are terrified by the marriage, although Derek's mother Loretta (Jacki Weaver), a devout Christian, believes divorce is out of the question. Instead, she suggests her son's new wife should be sterilized, and Bea is born mainly because Peg has the basic decency to argue against the notion.

After that, Derek and Sharon wind up mostly in the background and reduced to a couple of quirks (The father is religious, too, and the mother enjoys playing slot machines). The couple receive help in raising Bea as a baby and a kid, only to be taken care of by their daughter when she becomes a teenager.

Bea works a regular job, keeps up with school, ensures the bills are paid, makes meals for the family, and is otherwise in control of the household. When a new boy in school named Ethan (Charlie Plummer) catches her eye, though, Bea decides to let herself have a piece of ordinary life, and things gradually start to collapse.

The rest of this is mostly inseparable from a generic coming-of-age story, as Bea tries to balance her home life, her school work and activities, and the new beau. That approach could seem rather smart and considerate given the subject matter—except for the fact that the roles of Bea's parents are limited to existing in the background or being obstacles for her whenever they do become party of the story. Watching the movie, it's rather confounding how much more impact the roles of Bea's two grandmothers, her aunt Joy (Alexandra Daddario) and the aunt's husband Ben (Reid Scott), a best friend (played by Kannon Omachi), and the new boyfriend have this narrative than the relationship the tale ostensibly establishes as the primary one.

Instead, that relationship feels like a second or third thought to this movie, which means it doesn't actively insult or degrade the characters of the parents—only passively so (The whole coma angle, along with an investigation by Erika Alexander's social worker, seems to imply the possibility that the parents might have had something to do with their daughter's condition, which strikes a wrong note—even if it's only a suggested one). The filmmakers really go out of their way to give almost every other character and relationship a scene of some compassion and insight before they consider offering one of a similar nature between Bea and one of her parents.

There's something off about that choice, and it's present throughout Wildflower. Undeniably, the story within this movie is worth exploring, but the issue is that this movie doesn't have the patience or the basic interest to do so.

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