Well-acted and confidently made, the indie film “Scrap” explores troubled family relationships with understated but tense acuity, through dysfunctional family comedy, shouting matches, and shocking revelations. It avoids the usual extremes of high drama caused. Since premiering at the 2022 Deauville Film Festival, American writer-director Vivian Carr’s debut film has been touring film festivals for over two years, during which time she released her second film (period thriller “Meeting”) was completed. She plays the lead role in both films, but this isn’t a vanity project, and her own character is perhaps the least sympathetic of several awkwardly intertwined lives in Los Angeles. Carr is self-streaming this authoritative portrayal of the “hidden” homeless and troubled sibling dependency, which will be available on on-demand platforms on December 13th.
Beth (Kerr) is introduced when she wakes up in an SUV parked on a residential street in a middle-to-upper class neighborhood. She had no doubt that she belonged here—or so she did until she was recently kicked out of her home and corporate job. Now she is busy maintaining some semblance of stability despite losing her home and being pursued by repossession agents. All of this has been kept secret from her brother Ben (Anthony Rapp). But he begins to suspect that something is wrong, especially when Beth leaves his 5-year-old daughter Birdie (Julianna Lane) with him for an unconscionable length of time when she is supposed to be out of town on business. There is.
Although living in a comfortable environment, Ben has his own problems. A writer, he is pressured to put aside the work he holds dear in order to focus on a series of sword-and-sorcery novels he finds commercially successful but boring. are. Meanwhile, he and his wife Stacey (Lana Parrilla), a lawyer, are trying to conceive their first child through in vitro fertilization, but both are exhausted by the stress of things not going well. It’s not a good moment when Beth, always needy but bitter and defensive, shows up on his doorstep, demanding more as usual. After her car is broken into and her future job eliminated, she concocts further falsehoods to explain why she now has to work under roof with Birdie.
It takes a full hour for the truth to come out, and Ben accidentally discovers that his sister’s actual employment status is “ex.” But Carr’s screenplay fills that time with interesting character details that highlight the troubled brotherly relationship without making things too explicit. Ben, who lost his parents in unexplained circumstances a long time ago, is stuck early on with effectively raising his “baby sister”, and she simultaneously abuses and resents this supporting role. .
It’s clear this isn’t the first time she’s cost him his near infinite patience, and some of her decision-making is still very bad, so it goes without saying that Stacey is overhearing about her. Her fear of being seen as a “shithole” is justified. As a “blood-sucking vampire.” Brief, silent flashbacks to their childhoods suggest that they share the burden of a great loss that perhaps remains too painful to discuss.
There’s no melodramatic exaggeration in the difficult path taken here, and it ends on a bright note, with no reliance on magical fixes, just realistically recalibrated expectations. Ben and Stacey must reconsider the terms of their marriage. Beth has to stop lying to everyone, especially herself. Moving forward, she may need to move to a lower plateau of career and financial advancement. Part of that separation includes an ill-fated reunion with a now-repentant ex-lover (Brad Schmidt), who ran away as soon as she found out she was pregnant. There is also the possibility that a new working-class suitor (Cleo Thomas), previously unsuspected, may emerge.
All of these characters are well-portrayed by the cast and script, and their conflicts are almost felt rather than articulated. All three main characters are types who need to appear in control, no matter how harmful their deceptions may prove to be. Other than a soundtrack of 78-era Tin Pan Alley songs (apparently my late parents’ favorites), “Scrap” has little stylistic flourishes, much like stories like this usually do. It feels like a soft pedal to a confrontational big scene that leads the way. However, it is neither oval nor impressionistic. The level of outward emotional expression here remains true to a character who is reaching a boiling point inwardly but is still kept in check by self-respect and polite manners.
This sharp film allows us to solve problems without much explosive catharsis. That kind of release might end up being good for them, but it’s not who they really are, and “Scrap” leaves viewers satisfied with the brothers finally reaching their destination without it. provide a thorough understanding of
