A LITTLE PRAYER****

A LITTLE PRAYER is a rare film of quiet humanity, compassion and nuance. It's a family drama in which believable real people face real challenges with no easy answers.  It's unafraid to confront dark material and yet left me feeling deeply hopeful. 

Writer-director Angus Maclachlan (JUNEBUG) situates us in contemporary North Carolina.  David Strathairn (GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK) and Celia Weston play Bill and Venida - two quietly decent straightforward Boomers and small business owners. They don't seek out confrontation but neither are they blind to what's going on around them.  The smallest pieces of dialogue hint at an emotional hinterland and past marital struggles.  

Bill and Venida not only share a business with their feckless son David (Will Pullen) but also live with David and his wife Tammy (Jane Levy).  The film is really centred around David's fondness for his daughter-in-law and disapproval of his son's affair with their co-worker Narcedalia (Dascha Polanca).  We also get the family rhythms disrupted by the arrival of Bill and Venida's self-absorbed and chaotic daughter Patti (PITCH PERFECT's Anna Camp) and her young daughter Hadley.  But even as Patti might be a caricature of a distracted and careless mother, we realise that she may also be dealing with a dark home situation scare by opioid abuse.

The movie is really about parenthood.  Bill has an amazing conversation with Narcedalia where he disabuses her of her expectation that parents can control their kids and that a parent-child relationship provides a more secure kind of love than that between romantic partners. He seems bewildered and exasperated by his own children and incredibly tender toward Tammy.  And Tammy, while conflicted about her own infertility and ability to bring a child into such a difficult relationship, seems like more of a mother to Patti's young daughter than Patti is. 

I love how patient and nonjudgmental this film is.  The character of David might easily have been a villain, but even he is granted a scene of humanity.  Narcedalia could have been seen as a villain too but her story is heartbreakingly credible and admirable.  But really this film belongs to Jane Levy and David Strathairn, and a central pivotal scene really shows Levy's talent. I am not surprised that she has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. It's one of the most affecting performances I have seen this awards cycle. 

A LITTLE PRAYER is rated R and has a running time of 91 minutes. It played Sundance 2023 and then went into distribution hell. It was finally released in the USA last fall and is available to stream. It does not have a UK distributor. (I watched it on a FISA streamer).