Post by StevePulaski on Jul 28, 2017 23:43:19 GMT -5
3 Generations (2017)
Directed by: Gaby Dellal
Directed by: Gaby Dellal
From left: Elle Fanning, Naomi Watts, and Susan Sarandon in 3 Generations.
Rating: ★★
Gaby Dellal's 3 Generations means well. Like a dog who knows he knocked down the recently shattered vase, you can see the sincerity in its eyes that it really, truly wasn't trying to harm anything nor anyone. Its intentions were entirely good-natured with no malice intended. Really. It swears.
But how well 3 Generations means doesn't excuse it from being what it is; a forgettable movie that's frustratingly inert as a drama and unbelievably inconsequential as a look at the life of somebody who is transgender. Once advertised and released on the festival circuit as About Ray, the story of a female-to-male transgender teenager, before being pulled last minute after being marred by indifferent reactions and some uncomfortably odd comments by Dellal herself, the film went off the grid when the Weinstein's silenced all media around the film until it was tailored for another theatrical run under its current title.
The title change was a wise one because saying this film is "about Ray" is the most misleading summation of a title since Jason Voorhees' twenty minute stay in New York in the inaccurately titled eighth part of the Friday the 13th franchise. Instead of hearing about Ray's insecurities and plight as a teen in transition, we mostly get the exploits and misadventures of Ray's whiny mother Maggie (Naomi Watts) getting the courage to serve her divorced husband and Ray's father (Tate Donovan) with the papers that would allow Ray to legally identify as a man.
Meanwhile, Ray, played respectfully nonetheless by Elle Fanning, gets advice from her frazzled mother and her lesbian grandmother, played by Susan Sarandon in another performance a la her role in Grandma that shows how unrealistically liberal the characters she plays need to be. We get a lot of sitcomish banter between the three women as horrible instances of abuse Ray takes for her transition are laughed off and undermined by aimless shots of Ray skateboarding and so desperately trying to be the boy she has always seen herself as.
This is the work of a well-meaning filmmaker who either didn't do enough research regarding what it means to be transgender, didn't flesh out her story enough to be more than inspirational fluff, or some meandering combination of the two that still renders the films shallow and weightless. Naomi Watts somehow finds herself sucked into these strange roles in sometimes stupefying movies, this and The Book of Henry immediately coming to mind, while Susan Sarandon makes the most out of a stereotypical role yet again. Fanning, once more, really tries hard to add some weight and dimension to Ray, but even seems ill-equipped with trying to flesh out a character who is written in the background of his own movie.
With the Weinstein Company pulling the film last minute and letting it sit for some eighteen months before making an effort to spit it into a paltry number of theaters with little momentum or anticipation in its release, something tells me they wanted the ambition for the film downgraded from an impacting drama to a fluffy feel-good movie. There is nothing wrong with the latter if it's done right, but not only is 3 Generations so slight it's nearly invisible, but this is not the time to be making these kinds of films. It's time to make movies about the real emotion, difficultly, uncertainty, and danger of being transgender, and if movies like 3 Generations gloss over it, it doesn't matter how cutesy and kind-hearted they might appear to be.
Although it's not about the transgender community, in the face of 3 Generations' underwhelming quality, might I recommend 21st Century Women, a light but commendable picture about how the lives of a variety of women of different ages, generations, and personalities intersect and impact the life of a young boy and his sexual awakening? It's comparable light-hearted like 3 Generations, but it doesn't undermine its target demographic, and that's one of the first pitfalls you want to make sure you avoid when making a film of this caliber. The fact that this film commits that critical error so early and so frequently is deeply concerning and just about irredeemable in its mediocrity as a movie overall.
Starring: Elle Fanning, Naomi Watts, Susan Sarandon, Tate Donovan, and Linda Emond. Directed by: Gaby Dellal.