The family is definitely a favorite theme of the feature films offered this year at the Deauville American Film Festival. A story of interrupted dialogue between a brother and a sister serves as the starting point of the heart of the film “Montana Story” screened this Thursday, September 8.
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Published on 09/09/2022 20:04
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It is a film which, without a doubt, will please the president of the jury for this 48th edition of the Deauville Festival, Arnaud Despechin: Montana Story directed by Scott Mc Gehee and David Siegel. A story of brother and sister who have not spoken to each other for a long time and who will burst the abscess during a reunion at the bedside of their dying father. A theme that echoes the last film by the same Desplechin, Brother and sisterpresented at the Cannes Film Festival last May.
The story begins on a somewhat abandoned ranch in Montana. Snowy mountain landscapes, horses running free. A postcard decor. At the request of the employees who manage the ranch, Cal (Owen Teague), a reserved boy arrives at his father’s house at the end of his life. This is the first time he has returned to his childhood home in seven years. He is a lost. We guess that the father-son relationship has been complicated.
His sister, Erin (Haley Lu Richardson), arrives the next day and the discomfort is palpable this time. Erin lives in New York and has only one obsession, to recover the horse of her childhood promised to a near death, and to bring it back home. A story that will be the symbol of the unsaid and family secrets. Cal and Erin are obviously at odds, years of resentment resurfacing as their father dies. A father who crystallizes Erin’s hatred, who struggles to contain her rage. Cal is locked in silent pain. We guess that this authoritarian father shattered their innocence and their youth.
It is in the enchanting scenery of the great plains of Montana that the reconciliation between brother and sister will take place. A film that touched the festival-goers as the themes evoked, the toxic intra-family relations, the annoyances, the jealousies within the siblings, are omnipresent. We are not ready to forget the embrace of tender reconciliation between Cal and Erin who discover each other following seven years of sulking, nor the implacable words of a son to his dying father: “You lived as if life were a burden, maybe death will suit you better”.
