Lucy Kerr’s unnerving debut, “Family Portrait,” opens with a sequence the place a personality is intent on materializing the title in literal vogue. Katy (Deragh Campbell), a 20-something, tries to wrangle adults and youngsters to take a bunch picture collectively on a calid afternoon among the many greenery within the household’s huge property. As her kin stroll in direction of the chosen spot, the digital camera strikes horizontally whereas our bodies come out and in of the body. Katy, carrying a annoyed expression, struggles to get them to cooperate. Their scattered motion and Katy’s exasperation give the scene a dreamlike uncanniness.
Might these pictures be Katy’s unconscious preemptively anxious in regards to the process forward? For the next scenes, Kerr fragments the massive group into smaller cohorts settled all through the property, every having exchanges starting from the perils of workplace life to long-established anecdotes. However whereas free-floating and ethereal in its building, the movie’s deceiving familiarity slowly erodes, morphing into an unsettling, formally astute brain-tickler observing the placid domesticity of an prosperous Texas household of their pure habitat.
One scene sees Olek (Chris Galust), Katy’s Polish boyfriend, irate at People’ notorious lack of primary world geography information or different international locations’ cultures usually, exemplified by her household’s remarks. She explains they’re in Texas, as if that ought to function adequate justification. Their assumption that Oleg have to be from Russia or an Jap European nation, moderately than the extra central Poland, based mostly on his accent says extra in regards to the right-leaning ideological spectrum they inhabit than political diatribes might.
Nonetheless, extra apparent wealth signifiers abound, together with their employment of Maria (Vanessa Cedotal), their housekeeper, who presumably works for them wherever they dwell the remainder of the yr, and Frank (Ed Hattaway), the handyman accountable for caring for this trip house. Different extra subcutaneous guidelines additionally present their old-money mentality, like the truth that Olek isn’t allowed to be a part of the household portrait as a result of he and Katy are nonetheless not married. But he’s been designated because the photographer to take it. That one of many characters invokes John Carpenter’s “They Live,” a film the place the ruling class turn into aliens, lands like a realizing wink each in regards to the characters and the otherworldly ambiance.
Kerr reveals a deft management over her visually economical, experimental leaps. She by no means distorts the picture, nor does she use cut up screens or another showy enhancing gimmicks. Cinematographer Lidia Nikonova doesn’t make use of disorienting angles or digital camera strikes that decision consideration to themselves. As a substitute, the filmmaker depends on a soundscape by sound designers Andrew Siedenburg and Nikolay Antonov and the apathetic, erratic and at instances merciless tone of the forged’s performances to position the spectator in an enigmatic daze that feels too near normalcy for a lot of the ensemble piece’s brief working time.
One thing’s off, one can sense it, however no matter it’s, Kerr has made it elusive, unnamable. Essentially the most explicitly illusory picture is that of a hole tree trunk used as a mystifying hideout, alluding, it appears, to the idea of a household tree or to a passage between dream and actuality.
Information of a loss of life within the household — nobody notably shut however somebody all of them knew — rattles everybody and prompts Katy’s mom, the one who commissioned the household portrait picture for her elaborate vacation card, to vanish. All of a sudden loss of life permeates the air, and conversations shift from small discuss to cautionary tales about viruses and sicknesses that may take one’s life straight away. Nobody cares about this {photograph} anymore, aside from Katy. “Where’s mom?” she is going to ask to virtually anybody who will pay attention. All of them will ignore her. Campbell’s more and more flustered, virtually catatonic portrayal of Katy illustrates that she and Oleg aren’t but absolutely assimilated into the household’s dynamic. They stand out, not just for their youth, however as a result of they each radiate a need to please, to be accepted into the membership.
Photographs, particularly the nonetheless ones, have limitations on what they will elucidate about folks and their relationships, since they merely are cases of life frozen with out context of what got here earlier than or after. Even the transferring body can solely so probe so deep beneath the floor. No matter Olek might have been capable of seize in a snapshot would nonetheless have resulted in a shiny masks hiding conflicts and fears. The extra Katy descends right into a hazy loop of disassociation, whether or not awake or not, the extra it appears the prospect of taking the picture is the truth is the one factor holding the clan collectively, and Katy hooked up to it. Maybe by not taking it, she will be able to break the cycles which have, thus far, endured on this microcosm.
