(courtesy IMP Awards)
Working out what we want from life is one of the greatest challenges we’ll ever face.
In theory, it all sounds delightful and empowering, a chance to really know yourself, to set your existential sails off in pursuit of things you are passionate about and to live your best life, secure in the authenticity and truthfulness of your calling.
But in reality, in can be arduous and overwhelming and involve as much sadness and sacrifice as it involves freedom and excitement.
This salient life truth is something that the lead character in The Mattachine Family, Thomas (Nick Tortorella) discovers when a one-year foster stint of a bright, young six-year-old named Arthur (Matthew Jacob Ocampo) leaves him feeling utterly and completely bereft.
He and his husband Oscar (Juan Pablo Di Pace), a super popular child star who is only just now recovering his acting career after his outing cratered it in spectacularly awful ways, entered into being foster parents all too aware it could be a transient undertaking but even so, knowing something intellectually and experiencing the pain of its reality are two wholly things.
And Thomas isn’t coping well with all that painful reality intruding on a life that by an estimation is a charmed and gloriously comfortable one.
Thomas is a photographer based in L.A., and while his career hasn’t quite taken off as he’d hoped, with his bread and butter still being weddings and influencer photographic sessions, he has a husband who loves him, a career that pays the bills and close wonderful friends, including the other members of his found family – ex-neighbour Jamie (Jake Choi), and his longest-standing (she won’t abide being called his oldest) friend from college days, Leah (Emily Hampshire) and her wife Sonia (Cloie Wyatt Taylor).
These people are his world along with Oscar, of course, and while Thomas tries to set aside his unhappiness at Arthur’s departure – even though he is genuinely thrilled that Arthur is back with his mum, he grieves the fact that temporary little family is no more – he can’t move past his loss, especially when trying to have a child is consuming Leah and Sonia who are deep in the depths of IVF.
Thomas’s best friend Jamie has also found the love of his life after many years of singledom, which makes Thomas, often alone for weeks at a time while Oscar films in Michigan on his new TV show, feels like he is moribund in a way that has no easy solution.
Quite how Thomas will find a way out of the morasses of his own grieving for the loss of a family he didn’t know he wanted – Oscar was the original driver in this regard but backtracks on his wish for a family when his career takes off again – isn’t clear, but it soon becomes apparent, to Thomas, Oscar, and their social services case worker Laura (Annie Funke), who ends up as a friend, that some hard decisions on moving forward will have to be made because repressing all that familial pain and loss is not going to go away by simple wishful thinking.
Alternately wryly funny and heartwrenchingly emotionally raw, The Mattachine Family is a quiet, funny, sweetly serious indie film that goes right to the heart of what it takes for us to feel happy and fulfilled.
Driven by the brilliantly rich and warmly funny chemistry between Thomas and Leah, who are a delight with their bright, bubbling conversations the sublimely charming heart of this appealing film, the story’s focus on the undeniability of following our heart really hits home.
There are no doubt people who can suppress their inner truth for convenience or what they see as the greater good, but Thomas, god bless his mopey introspection is not one of them, and as The Mattachine Family progresses on a relaxed if occasionally emotionally intense nuanced narrative track, anchored by expositional narration by Thomas which doesn’t feel interruptive or clunky because it very much feels in line with the sort of person our heart-torn protagonist is.
These scenes which include a slew of photos and nostalgic recollections by Thomas serve to enrich our understanding of the characters, Thomas’s grief-soaked childhood (which in turn explains why having a kid right at that point in time matters so much) and why much of the storyline, which can feel a little self-centred and obsessive, if gently so, on Thomas’s part, returns again and again to the same themes and starting point.
Directed by Andy Valentine to a screenplay written by Andy’s husband, Danny, The Mattachine Family reflects the journey of one couple towards possible parenthood – reflecting the director and writer couple’s own discussions on the issue (see below) – and how what is almost universally viewed, in popular and societal culture at least a good thing, can be anything but, and can indeed be almost cataclysmically destructive for a relationship.
Approached with real empathy and insight and dialogue that just sparkles with warmth and indie-level humanity, The Mattachine Family is one of those films that articulates some big truth with a deceptively laidback story that has the feel and rhythm of everyday life and the relationships that anchor it, but which is really asking some very big questions in amongst the thoughtfully quiet and chilled vibe.
It doesn’t always hit the mark and at one point you have to question whether Thomas is risking everything rather senselessly in his quest to become a dad again, but what emerges strongly throughout is that this really matters to him, and while he could pretend everything is okay and leave the window dressing of his life intact while the inside real him rots into sadness, that’s not sustainable in the ong term.
In the end, The Mattachine Family (the title is inspired by the first U.S. gay rights group in the 1950s) feels like a warm and wonderful journey with a family who together support one of their own as he works out what really matters to him, beyond the obvious, and takes whatever steps are necessary to make it come to pass, hopefully with everyone he loves still close to him for the duration. (And that ending? Oh my lord, you hope it is what you think it is; your heart is crying out for it, anyway and if you believe in happy ever afters, you can only hope your suppositions are correct.)