Family Portrait
How does the wind sound? Indeed it can sometimes be soothing and people go as far as incorporating such sounds into white noise machines, a fact too common to consider explaining. However, it is clear that there’s a twist to it too. Something in the wind. Something wakes in the wind. An approaching storm. An airborne disease.
The wind blowing through grasses and leaves that create wild winds detaled is almost a character of “Family Portrait” movie which creates tension in the film which is quite well made and rather intentionally stylised as a dream instead of realism. Shot immediately before Covid times, it, however, is quite an eerie episode of a piece seek drama in which recreates situations which make one feel as if something bad either has just about or maybe has already happened and the clichés of a family shot with everyone grinning for dear life with a lens at them at arms length doesn’t convey what is happening at that blink of a forced smile. That could we call “Family Portrait” melodrama, the scenario when thousand of filmmakers joined Kerr here to explore the conflict within a family which often develops with in laws. This is not quite that kind of movie. This is a relatively happy family, quite unlike those in many families. just like many were in early 2020.
Kerr’s introductory scene stands out as one of the finest opening scenes of any film in the year. In silence we observe a group of well off people walking across a field, these shots bringing to mind images of a family get together. It is almost as though the camera is not able to decide on whom to focus and therefore affords the audience the POV of a participant in the activity and at the same time outlines the restless style of the film’s imagery. In the last shot of a sequence, a character enters a moving image which is too fast for her to catch up with, or too fast, she never gets into the impression, and almost looks like a doll being tossed by the wind. Noisy childish cries break through the silence at first, then during the course of the scene more and more gradually the noise of the occasion spills in as the children are at play and the grown ups to talk over each other.
After that tone setter, Kerr settles into a large family estate where water residents’ of the family have converged for the yearly event taking a photograph to be used at the upcoming family holiday card. As a majority of the scenes take place behind a stationary camera most of the time, it is just like someone accidentally left the microphone and camera in the room and captured the conversations, which is not meant to be so harsh on Kerr’s amazing visual flair that makes even such pictures less impactful.
Finally, it is Katy (Deragh Campbell) who takes center stage, she is the one who has returned home with her Olek (Chris Galust) boyfriend from Poland to take a family picture. There is a certain degree of tension that arises from the fact that he is left out of the picture and that people, especially Katy and Olek, do not seem to have the time pressure required in capturing the picture in time for the two to run to the airplane. The dialogues tend to bring some of the international feeling where an individual talks about the moods around them when a family member passes away and the very interesting one of a picture that is worth a thousand words but may be deceptive family pictures if rather.
It is evident that the head of this clan has somehow gone missing without any explanation. Mom can not be photograpged until they “find” her, most likely Katy is the only one who cares. What was it, the flight, or was there something more ominous brewing beneath all this? After such an extended sequence where she walks the grounds and then swims, there follows an accompanying shot to this opening montage in which Katy, drenched and dry, wades through a space with other family members. Again, in order to stress the feeling of disorientation and dislocation two emotions that will characterize so much of the year 2020 Katy’s body is not the aim of Kerr’s camera in a typical way.
“Family Portrait” with an approximate duration of 74 minutes, at some point feels like a more assured short film more than its present self. It is in that middle territory where a director has too many ideas for a short, but not quite enough meat on the bones for a long film. Yes, however, a certain tonal control here stifles that feeling, or criticism if you will. It’s just like the way we remember our family functions selectively. While reminiscing about the yearly Tallerico family gatherings of childhood I have some flashes of conversations of those gatherings complete with their damn picture that marked the end of such occasions. I can almost hear the wind if I just shut my eyes.
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