In Unless, a woman grapples with the sudden departure of her seemingly happy college-aged daughter, who is discovered on the streets of Toronto several weeks later, mute and virtually catatonic.
The Canada-Ireland co-production is directed by Alan Gilsenan and based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields鈥� final novel, which delves into issues of female exclusion with a much angrier tone on the page than is on display here in the film.
Instead, Catherine Keener gives a masterly, often daring performance as a mother moving through several stages of grief as she tries to solve the mystery of her daughter鈥檚 catastrophic transformation.
Reta (Keener) is translator for a successful feminist writer as well as an author in her own right, with one fairly successful novel to her credit. She lives comfortably with partner Tom (Matt Craven) and three teenaged daughters, a bustling, stimulating life. But the idyll is shattered when Reta receives a phone call that her eldest, Norah (Hannah Gross), has left university and is living on the streets.
A frenzied drive downtown confirms her fears: Norah is parked right outside the bright lights and nickel-and-dime kitsch of Honest Ed鈥檚 store. She does not speak, she does not ask passersby for money: she simply sits all day holding a cardboard sign that reads 鈥済oodness.鈥�
Reta and the family try everything: they plead and cry. They bring creature comforts and family friends by. Because Norah is over 18 there is little that they can do. An ex-boyfriend and the director of a shelter where Norah sleeps each night yield precious little information. In the end, there is nothing for Reta to do but keep silent vigil with her daughter, waiting for the reason for Norah鈥檚 silent protest to be revealed.
Meanwhile, Norah faces some of the more predictable perils of life on the street, her face a silent mask of compressed suffering. 聽
She and Tom鈥檚 rock-solid relationship shows cracks as he considers institutionalization (鈥淲e didn鈥檛 push her away, she did that all by herself!鈥�) while Reta preaches patience. (She does, however, reach a breaking point and try to drag Norah into her waiting car, a tactic considered by every truthful parent in the audience.) And it isn鈥檛 long before Norah鈥檚 choice affects Reta鈥檚 life as a public figure: a tenacious reporter (Brendan Coyle) asks Reta a few soft-lob questions before getting to the heart of the matter, the issue of 鈥渢he famous author and the homeless child.鈥� (With this one scene director Alan Gilsenan may go down as the guy who turned Downton Abbey鈥檚 beloved valet into an asshole.)
Two months and four days in, Reta is cathartically writing about that word, goodness, as she creates a new reality for her family. 鈥淗appiness isn鈥檛 goodness, I know that now,鈥� she says.
It鈥檚 hard to maintain the energy of that initial dramatic premise, waiting as we are for the reason that Norah took to the streets. Credit goes to Gilsenan for paring down some of the weightier elements of Shields鈥� prose in order to give vitality to a film that is essentially a mystery about a young woman sitting still; it鈥檚 a film that鈥檒l move you, regardless.
Unless opens Friday at International Village.
