A Bit of Light, 2024.
Directed by Stephen Moyer.
Starring Anna Paquin, Ray Winstone, Luca Hogan, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Youssef Kerkour, Rebecca Callard, Tim Cullingworth-Hudson, Eliza-Beau Ibbetson, and Xena Ibbetson.
SYNOPSIS:
Ella, at almost forty, is forced to move back in with her father Alan. She’s trying to stay sober having temporarily given up custody of her young daughters to her ex-husband Joseph and his new partner Bethan.
Nearly everything about A Bit of Light feels forced and fake, and that’s without getting into some of the awkward and inappropriate character dynamics that the film, while acknowledging that it doesn’t look good, also comes around to portray as acceptable. Rebecca Callard adapts her stage play, but the real draw here is director Stephen Moyer collaborating on his sophomore feature with co-star and wife Anna Paquin, marking a True Blood reunion. It’s also understandable why she would get involved and trust his vision, as, on paper, this is an engaging, complicated story about addiction, failing as a parent, indulgence in self-pity, and a problematic but sweet developing friendship at the center.
The problem is that the engagement is always at a distance, with something around the corner that breaks the immersion. It is equally the performance from Anna Paquin laying on thickly the neurotic, emotionally broken, mentally fractured tics of Ella, or the friendship a nearly 14-year-old boy strikes up with her out of loneliness and potentially seeing some light in her he wants to try bringing out. They meet at a playground, a location Ella regularly visits as an unhelpful coping mechanism for grieving her daughters, who aren’t dead, but rather she isn’t allowed to see due to some particularly nasty outbursts in front of them following some heavy drinking.
The boy is Neil (an impressive newcomer turn from Luca Hogan), often vague about his living situation, insisting that he simply has older, naïve parents, and say let him run around doing whatever he wants. It’s also evident that, whether these parents exist or not, he doesn’t have much of any parental figure in his life. He is also able to put it together that Ella is visiting a playground for a purpose (even if nothing says creepy like a 40-year-old person casually hanging out at the playground without little kids to look after), making conversation with her and pushing her toward the idea that she would make a good guardian toward him.
Although Ella indulges Neil and some of his crazy dreams (such as an instance of traveling that eventually leads to a sequence that qualifies as kidnapping), she naturally tries her hardest to hide the relationship from her concerned father (Ray Winstone) and ex-partner Joseph (Youssef Kerkour), who has since moved on and found a new partner (Pippa Bennett-Warner) more suitable for raising the girls. Ella constantly shrugs off group therapy meetings as beneath her and more for alcoholics, generally going out of her way to keep us on the side of Joseph in not wanting to give her a few guardianship days.
As a story, this is solid in theory, but from the moment Neil starts talking about being a Prince fanatic, the screenplay feels hacky, bringing these characters together as similar in ways that hardly feel genuine or earned. The entire script files in those wrongheaded footsteps, veering back and forth between grounded and far-fetched. In that case, one could also say that there is a bit of light here, but not enough to make an illuminating drama out of it. A Bit of Light is, ultimately, too exaggerated and phony to work as intended.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
