Ghostlight

Movies about the power of acting feel very natural. Theater practice is the perfect setting for immersion therapy, gaining a deeper understanding of yourself when you have no choice but to empathize with a character from whom you could barely be more different, or build trust in a person you don't know or maybe even like. It can make for wonderful, layered dramatic arcs, especially when the person we're following is in no way an obvious fit for the theater. And it's hard to think of someone less suited for live performance than Dan (Keith Kupfer). He's a big and gruff guy, a stereotypical construction worker, yet also tight-lipped and bashful. His feelings are completely walled off from everyone, even himself. Whenever they threaten to rear their ugly head, either he storms out of the room, or he stops talking. Both result in further bottling them up, inevitably leading to them boiling over at inopportune times. When Rita (Dolly de Leon) witnesses one such eruption and brings him into her community theater group, the stage is set for a transformation. Which does come, but refreshingly on his own terms rather than as a complete flip of his personality. Ghostlight doesn't claim that this one experience could make him brand new, but it absolutely gives him the space to work through some things and change his perspective.

Key to it all is a traumatic event which happened in the recent past. The movie slowly doles out details, granting you full understanding before we get to the obligatory point where the specifics are laid on the table. But as the movie knows it's obligatory, it adds some extra layers of character depth and development. So instead of coming away feeling like we were spoonfed, it sticks in your mind as one of the best scenes in a movie not lacking for excellent scenes.

For a while, all we know is that the family is pressing charges against someone for the death of their son Brian a year earlier, and that Dan gets very upset when he finds his wife Sharon (Tara Mallen) planting a garden in a large area of their lawn with no grass. That there's a connection to Brian is clear, but not what it is. When Dan reveals to Rita and the others that Brian's death was a suicide, the audience immediately comes to understand just how directly Dan will be forced to confront the pain he's been running from for a year. Because even though Dan doesn't know the story of Romeo & Juliet in which he'll be performing, the rest of us do.

This is a solid little microcosm of how contrived so many of the important plot beats feel. Because while I try to be mindful that not everyone has the same experience of culture, not even one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, it's implausible for someone whose daughter (Daisy, played by Katherine Mallen Kupferer) is such a thespian that when he asks her about the play, she instantly recites the opening chorus from memory. You can almost see Kelly O'Sullivan putting pen to paper to make that happen. The same silliness is at work to lead to Tyler (Charlie Lubeck) throwing a tantrum and leaving the production, creating a void into which Dan is shoved. Which makes clear something very important: being contrived doesn't completely rob a situation of its power. Yes, the way Dan ends up in the role of Romeo is silly. But that his acting will now take him even closer to his son, forcing him to not only confront his death but to metaphorically experience it, to understand why someone might decide taking their own life is the best option, leads to multiple emotional and moving moments through the rest of the film.

Actually detrimental is how utterly incoherent the character of Daisy is. It's not the performance: the performance is great. But the way she's written is contradictory and inconsistent, constructed script-first without a sense of who she is. She is simultaneously a foul-mouthed brat who curses at the principal, pushes a teacher, and stands in the middle of the street flipping off a car, and also a very smart, naturally gifted and dedicated actor in her school's musicals. She scoffs at the idea of going to therapy, gloating that she sat through the first hour-long session in complete silence, but also pleads with her father to join her because she thinks it would be helpful for him to talk about what he's feeling concerning Brian. The idea is supposed to be that she's lashing out in the wake of her brother's death and the damage it's done to her home life, as emphasized by certain details of that event that come to light later. Far be it from me to police how someone acts following the loss of a sibling. But we spend so long setting her up as a difficult child, with parents who don't know how to handle her, watching as she's aggressive towards everyone...until all of a sudden she's not, with no obvious external force. Her existence is a device to bounce Dan off of and drive the plot forward at particular moments. You feel all of this strongly in the way you can't really get a handle on what her deal is, and how they unceremoniously drop the whole subplot in which she's been suspended from school. She's far too big of a character to get away with being this undercooked.

To be clear, this doesn't ruin the movie, since the rest of the story is far more well-considered, even in its clunkier and more stilted moments. And besides, the wonderful supporting cast is there to carry you through like a warm hug. It helps that the fictional Mueller family is played by a real life acting clan. Keith's in his first leading role after kicking around film and TV for decades, alongside his thespian wife Tara who's won a Chicagoland award for a stage performance. Their daughter Katherine hasn't been in much yet, but did have a small supporting role in last year's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.. All are terrific here, especially Katherine. Keith's performance could easily be mistaken for wooden, but the many moments of raw emotion he displays make clear the other times reflect a deliberate portrayal of Dan's attitude. All of the play's cast are delightful, too: from Alma Washington to Tommy Rivera-Vega to Hanna Dworkin to Dexter Zollicoffer (Moira, Lucien, Lanora, and Greg, respectively), and the others.

Of course, to the surprise of no one who saw Triangle of Sadness¹, the standout is Dolly de Leon. From the moment she steps on screen to chastise Dan and his construction crew for the noise, she commands every single scene she's in. Some of that is the writing: she's a strong, confident character, a professional actor who grew disillusioned with Broadway and left, starting her own theater. But that's not enough to explain just how compelling and raw and damn electric she is. Especially since most of her scenes are shared with Dan, the contrast between their energies jump off the screen. She's not hyper or frantic, and yet she's so much more full of life and self-assured. More than that, she's absolutely incredible at believably playing someone who knows people better than they know themselves. It's only a matter of time before some director wises up and gives de Leon the lead role she deserves.

This is only the second movie written by Kelly O'Sullivan (who's also co-director), and it feels like she's still perfecting the craft. Being an indie film with (mostly) minor actors, she can't rely on them to elevate the material, so its flaws become fairly glaring. Her pacing is damn near perfection, but the central conceit is too literal and thus limited, and the characters feel overwritten and thus fake. That being said, the story is so wonderful, and the filmmaking so warm that it's not hard to look past all that and bask in the execution. It's a little indie gem that will probably go mostly overlooked, but deserves your time and attention.