A woman having to accompany her husband while the latter must be treated for his mental health confides her 9-year-old son to her brother, a single journalist.
Mike Mills is that filmmaker who 10 years ago helped Christopher Plummer finally get an Oscar thanks to his performance in Beginners. It is with him that Joaquin Phoenix chose to return to the cinema, two years later Joker and the plethora of prizes that its composition has earned it.
In C’mon C’mon (The very moment is the French title in Quebec), the actor slips into the skin of Johnny, a character much more “ordinary” than those to whom he has accustomed us for a few years. Shot in black and white, this independent feature film evokes the developing relationship between a single forty-something, whose life is rather disorganized, and his young nephew, aged 9 (Woody Norman). The latter ends up with his uncle, the time that his mother (Gaby Hoffmann) can help his father (Scoot McNairy) to recover his mental health.
Even if the starting point of this story could suggest the opposite, Mike Mills, who signs his fourth feature film, does not borrow here a traditional approach, let alone Hollywood. Strewn with a permanent melancholy veil, the story rather lingers on analyzing, too sometimes, the slightest actions of the protagonists, the slightest words they exchange. To improve his point, the filmmaker also makes Johnny a journalist going to meet young people across America for a report, just to ask them how they see the future. This track seems to have been chosen to tend towards something more substantial, but it ultimately brings nothing more.
Beautifully photographed (Images are from Robbie Ryan, once cited at the Oscars thanks to The Favorite), C’mon C’mon is part of that kind of movie where emotions are rationalized to a point where they get stuck in their tracks. That said, the ever-fascinating Joaquin Phoenix is impeccable, and so is young Woody Norman.
In theaters in the original version and in the original version with French subtitles.
Drama
C’mon C’mon
Mike Mills
With Joaquin Phoenix, Woody Norman, Gaby Hoffmann
1 h 48
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