Wow what a great sleeper! Having seen some Josh Wiggins movies I thought I'd give this one a look and it's first rate. Bill Palet (JK Simmons) is a middle aged school teacher who, soon after the death of his vivacious artist wife Jeanie (Kimberley Crandall), suddenly moves from San Francisco to LA with his high school junior aged son Wes (Josh Wiggins) and enrolls him in an exclusive private school where he gets a job run by one of his closest college buddies Paul (Kevin Dunn). At first the movie plays out in a more regular fashion, Wes is forced to play sport (cross country) and befriends a couple of social misfits until his French teacher (Julie Delpy) realizes Wes is very good at French and assigns him to be the homework partner to an aloof pretty girl Lacy (Odeya Rush) who attends from a neighboring private girls school and who is the subject of much jock attention.
As the movie progresses, it dives much deeper into a series of profound emotional crises arising from the delayed and suppressed grief at the loss of a wife and mother so loved. Wes dances around a crush on Lacy who herself is embroiled in her parents toxic marriage break up and she copes by cutting herself. Corine the French teacher takes a fancy to Bill and they have a mild fling but that triggers Bill's suppressed grief and he has a nervous breakdown. Wes and Lacy are too damaged to make any kind of even teenage relationship work.
The movie wonderfully explores Bill as he tries to treat his grief with a rather wooden and intense psychiatrist and after the breakdown, the movie poignantly portrays Wes' visceral fear that his depressed father will take his own life and it all culminates in rather powerful, dramatic and eventually beautiful moments where father and son are reconciled to the loss and grief and are able to succeed in sport, relationships and work.
JK Simmons is simply superb and knocks it out of the park. 17 year old Josh Wiggins is a fabulous teen actor and puts in a fantastic and at times intense performance (complete with doing his own scenes as a leading cross country runner), informed undoubtedly by his own recent loss of his mother to cancer. The movie has a cool twist where Bill gives his 1971 Mustang Mach 1 convertible to Wes minus the front passenger seat and Lacy manages to find a secondhand one as a thank you for the tutoring but they can only fit it in facing backwards!
As the movie progresses, it dives much deeper into a series of profound emotional crises arising from the delayed and suppressed grief at the loss of a wife and mother so loved. Wes dances around a crush on Lacy who herself is embroiled in her parents toxic marriage break up and she copes by cutting herself. Corine the French teacher takes a fancy to Bill and they have a mild fling but that triggers Bill's suppressed grief and he has a nervous breakdown. Wes and Lacy are too damaged to make any kind of even teenage relationship work.
The movie wonderfully explores Bill as he tries to treat his grief with a rather wooden and intense psychiatrist and after the breakdown, the movie poignantly portrays Wes' visceral fear that his depressed father will take his own life and it all culminates in rather powerful, dramatic and eventually beautiful moments where father and son are reconciled to the loss and grief and are able to succeed in sport, relationships and work.
JK Simmons is simply superb and knocks it out of the park. 17 year old Josh Wiggins is a fabulous teen actor and puts in a fantastic and at times intense performance (complete with doing his own scenes as a leading cross country runner), informed undoubtedly by his own recent loss of his mother to cancer. The movie has a cool twist where Bill gives his 1971 Mustang Mach 1 convertible to Wes minus the front passenger seat and Lacy manages to find a secondhand one as a thank you for the tutoring but they can only fit it in facing backwards!