Who Is MOM?
MOM, Lonely Christopher (2020)
Lonely Christopher's first feature MOM is a fascinating entry into a genre I will call the spiritual detective story. Try (Joseph Huffman), the young protagonist of the picture, has engaged an organization called Responsible Research to find his birth mother, and the search sends him on a series of adventures that brings him closer and closer to a possible resolution. But the real journey of the film is one from innocence to experience, and Christopher uses the structure of a police procedural to dramatize the universal sensation of having one's mind blown by encountering a larger, more complicated world.
Like Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Try encounters a series of vivid, archetypal characters who send him deeper and deeper into his investigation (spoilers ahead). Paul Lazar's Clancy operates a rural branch of Responsible Research, close to the sheltered community where Try has spent most of his life with a foster family. Clancy launches Try's quest by sending him to a "city" that remains nameless, as fits the dreamlike nature of the story.
MOM, Lonely Christopher (2020)
When Try arrives at the urban branch of Responsible Research, run by a trio of antic "detectives," he is instantly out of his depth. Carmen (Melinda Prisco), Petal (Alejandra Bufala) and Arden (Gore Abrams) are charming, cryptic, contentious and queer, arguing in Spanish and staggering around in dirty underwear. As young Try struggles to get his bearings in this new heightened environment. the filmmakers do a stellar job of keeping us locked into his perspective. It's a beautiful use of subjective POV and through the camerawork, editing, and writing we find ourselves piecing together the new reality in much the same way as Try does.
Arden becomes a Virgil figure for Try, introducing him to a pair of characters played by heavyweight guest stars Mink Stole (mysterious drug addled mentor Woodrow) and Michael Potts (sardonic and passionate bookseller Andy). The film settles into a more theatrical mode with these characters, allowing them to take over the narrative with riddles, ruminations, flights of fancy, and verbal rabbit holes. What makes it all work is the continuing storytelling focus on Try's expanding sense of self, as his world opens up to include such fascinating creatures as Woodrow, Andy, the three detectives, and the mysterious Judy Curtains (Janet Hubert), a woman who might hold the key to Try's quest.
MOM, Lonely Christopher (2020)