I’ll Be Right There
Romantic, platonic, or familial, relationships will have you asking the same age old question. At which point does support turn into bedrock? It is the question answered by Wanda (Edie Falco), constantly saving the people she loves. Or it would be, if all that saving she does afforded her five minutes of pondering what she was even doing to begin with.
Wanda works as a bookkeeper. In the evenings, she is on the move to various clients, putting their accounts back in order. The rest of the time, she tries to bring some structure to the messy lives of her two grown up kids, and her old mother Grace played by Jeannie Berlin. Her daughter, Sarah Kayli, is eight months pregnant. Her son Mark, played by Charlie Tahan, is a drug addict in recovery whose therapist doesn’t have much faith in recovery anymore. As soon as Wanda is saved from one of them, there is a phone call from any one of the others in need of help. Wanda is always soft spoken, kind, and extremely helpful whether she is taking supplies and food containers to the family or fresh clothes, or bailing Mark from the lockup, or even singing to Sarah that her daughter in her womb is healthy, when she was planning a big reception just a week or so from the delivery date.
Wanda also shows love to two other partners. Marshall, the kind-hearted one (Michael Rapaport), and Sophie, a college professor (Sepideh Moafi). Wanda shows some affection to Marshall too but he is depressed. His broken wrist has sidelined him from all the sports activities, which were his lifeline. This has led him to a profound midlife crisis. Wanda does not take a fancy for Sophie when she wants to have sexual relations and is interested in her only due to her ability to please during intimacy. No, she’s not eager to present Wanda to any of her acquaintances and they do not even discuss anything important. There is only one person whom Wanda can answer with hostility or contempt her ex, Henry (Bradley Whitford), Sarah and Mark’s father who has a new spouse and three little kids now. A former classmate of her (a handsome Michael Beach) makes an appearance, and she surprised herself by offering him her assistance right away.
As far as independent films go, “I’ll Be Right There” scores highly. The film also boasts of unique yet believable and delightful characters, wit in the script, and skillfully crafted, emotional performances from the entire cast. This applies even to the short but impactful supporting parts played by cast members Fred Grandy as the doctor, Geoffrey Owens as the therapist, and Jack Mulhurn as Sophie’s fiancé, Eugene. Each such instance is a small film on its own. To watch Berlin anticipating (incorrectly) the diagnosis of a physician and trying to walk out as a victim before anything is said is hilarious, as is watching her talk about her deceased husband and grand daughter to her granddaughter. (the daughter’s mention of pecan pie made me think it was a reference to her more famous character, the abandoned wife in the heart breaker kid).
And then Falco is amazing, of course. She reveals to us what the character feels better than the character does. There is a level of disillusionment, however, that Wanda seems oblivious to. At one point, after she starts being more conscious of herself, she claims that the persistent sense of avoidance ‘tickles’ her.
This satisfies her necessity to be needed and provides an alibi as to why she is always out of focus regarding what she truly wants.
Jim Beggarly, the screenwriter, strikes a good balance between the believability of the characters in the film with how the story is structured. Characters like Sarah, Mark and Grace are believable to a certain degree, but they also represent three different pulls Wanda has. Sarah is demanding and self-centered. She looks to Wanda for comfort, and watching Eugene as he struggles with how much reassurance Sarah seeks from him makes Wanda slowly realize that she doesn’t help in solving Sarah’s issues and that she basically is not required to. Mark is angry towards Wanda for wanting to help and believes that it is demeaning that she worries about him. And Grace appears to be living on a totally different world altogether. Wanda hardly has her attention unless she is taking her out for ice cream which is seldom.
The title itself explains it fully. When help is required, Wanda interjects that she will be there momentarily. But it is a rather sad note when one realizes that being all over the ‘right theres’ does not allow one to focus on a ‘here’.
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