В In the film "The Accompanist," Susan Sarandon demonstrates a high degree of complexity with seeming ease. As Sylvia, the little girl's adoptive mother, she plays a character who is slightly eccentric and indulgent, kind and at times wise, but with her own emotional baggage. And Sarandon transforms what could have been a template for sentimentality and cliché into a believable, unique, and deeply real person.
In fact, all the actors in this feature film debut from director Zach Woods, best known as an actor in comedies, including the HBO series "« Silicon Valley, are compelling and compelling. They are the strongest element of the story of nine-year-old Emily (Everly Carganilla), whose grandfather and guardian (Kevin Morrow) is showing serious signs of dementia. Aubrey Plaza, in a small role, plays the incompetent social worker who removes Emily from her home and takes her to live with Sylvia in a neighboring New Jersey town.
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But Woods, who co-wrote the screenplay with Brandon Gardner, attempts to infuse elements of magical realism into the artful drama, which raises even more questions. It's not that the two elements can't coexist, but that one works far better than the other.
Emily's story is gripping from the start, as she worries about her loving grandfather, who can no longer safely care for her. His near-accident on the train tracks, a scene full of tension and suspense, frightens even Emily. Notified by the school nurse, Plaza's character, Sara, arrives at the house and, as she later admits, in a fit of panic, abruptly drags Emily to her car and drives her to Sylvia's.
Visually, the film skillfully balances reality and fantasy, featuring crisp cinematography that at times appears a bit brighter than reality. The production design lends Sylvia's home, filled with photographs and knick-knacks, an old-fashioned, almost fairytale-like quality.
Sylvia herself is as multifaceted as her cluttered home. When Emily refuses to come inside, Sylvia simply lets her stay outside, then finds her at the playground, where they spend the night. She smokes and plays pranks. She conveniently forgets to send Emily to school. Much of this plot, even the realistic elements, requires casting logic aside to be believed. Sarah, well-intentioned but astonishingly incompetent, never specifies which of them—she or Sylvia—will enroll Emily in school. And we see, long before the supposedly perceptive Sylvia, when Emily is most likely to run away. But Sylvia and Emily develop a charming rapport, and their scenes together are witty and easygoing enough to keep the story going for a while.
It's a shame that this chaotic script spends so much time hinting at the tragedy in Sylvia's past before revealing it. This secret is hinted at in the film's very first scene: a ballerina performs desperate movements in what appears to be a medical facility. Here and in subsequent scenes, dancer Emma Farnell-Watson conveys the agony and pain of the heroine, who we eventually learn is Sylvia's late daughter, Nadia.
Nadya's story, initially subtle, suggests much about why Sylvia might have wanted to foster a child without explicitly explaining it. However, the more we learn about her and Sylvia's grief, the more overwrought the script becomes, and this subtlety disappears. The parallels are too clear: Emily's frequent nervous twitching of the neck becomes an echo of Nadya's anorexia.
The fantasy element appears quite late in the film, but its arrival is clearly foreshadowed. The story begins on Halloween, when Emily's grandfather reads her a fairy tale about witches. And while magical realism is the film's most unusual element, it is also its weakest. Various scenes, divorced from reality, initially seem mysterious, but then become dizzying and disorienting. When Sylvia and Emily fly through the night sky, there is a hint that it may be a dream. And later, when Sylvia thinks about Nadia during dance class (a scene that unfolds onscreen), it seems as if Emily may be sharing Sylvia's memories, dreams, or something else. The film struggles to open the door to a world of magic, and these episodes fall flat.
In the film "The Accompanist"« There are some wonderful moments. Carganilla makes Emily heartbreaking in the way she ultimately dreams of staying with Sylvia, trying to learn to play the piano to please her, slowly picking out a touching, surprisingly appropriate phrase from «Porgy and Bess» . But as the plot develops, this ambitious film becomes too sentimental and pretentious.
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