RSS
Home
Accidents Happen: laughs, bruises, one destructive bowling ball
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Young Billy Conway lives in a surreal suburbia where accidental incinerations are omnisciently narrated, car crashes occur in dreamlike slow motion, and Mom comes across as an otherworldly creature, which might be because she speaks in metaphors and might be because she’s played by Geena Davis, an actress who – like anyone in the fifty plus range who isn’t Meryl Streep – is something of an onscreen rarity..jpg)
Needless to say, she seems a little out of place here, possibly since Accidents Happen is set in Connecticut and shot in Australia, with a talented cast of mainly Australian actors trying to sound American. Once you get past that it’s a very good film, a promising feature debut (by director Andrew Lancaster and writer Brian Carbee) that isn’t shy in its examination of a nasty-yet-funny family dynamic. And Harrison Gilbertson, who plays Billy (Carbee’s semi-fictitious self) carries the movie with understated appeal.
When Billy is five, he watches his elderly neighbor set himself on fire. A week or so later he unwittingly causes a car accident that kills his older sister and leaves his older brother in a coma. Flash forward eight years, and Billy’s a teenager who visits his sister’s grave but won’t admit it. His father has moved out and is dating a perky blond with a voice so high I’m surprised it doesn’t break any windows. His mother, who cooks unidentifiable meals, can’t bring herself to visit her son in the hospital. His other brother is an alcoholic, and his only real friend is a neighborhood boy with a knack for mischief that results in yet another death by way of bowling ball.
In a Q and A following a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival (Accidents Happen screens tonight and Saturday), Lancaster explained the genesis for the film: watching Carbee sing, dance, and impersonate his real-life mom. The director, who also works as a composer and has won awards for several shorts, has a real gift for defining mood with music; the world he creates lightens the weight of tragedy. The result is a moving, comic fairy tale, with Davis vacillating between the good witch and the bad, and gleeful sequences of mischievous behavior that might cause accidents but are obviously all in good fun.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
Single, married or something in between? Find what you need for Valentine's Day.
