The
Ozarks have not had much luck in film and television. Generally, the mountainous
plateau is portrayed as a place that combines the worst of the old world and contemporary
society. There you will find all kinds of spooky old timey magic practiced, as
well as meth. For a recently discharged veteran, it also happens to be home,
but for her that is not a point in its favor. The land of Winter’s Bone gets a similar sort of treatment this time around,
but there is more empathy than usual in Ramaa Mosley’s Lost Child (trailer
here),
which is now playing in New York.
Janella
“Fern” Sreaves has come “home,” but she still carries part of the war with her.
We can tell, because her aversion to guns is quite atypical for the region (and
also for her former profession). She returns to the grim duty of her father’s
funeral, but for her it is really a matter of paperwork. She would like to patch
things up with her recidivist brother Billy, but he holds fast to his misplaced
grievances.
That
is all very frustrating for Sreaves, but par for the course. Things start to
get weird for her when she finds a waifish boy shivering in the woods. Rather awkwardly,
the local social worker happens to be her homecoming hook-up, Mike Rivers. Picking
up on her own foster kid history, Rivers guilts Sreaves into sheltered the
polite Cecil, at least temporarily. However, as soon as she welcomes him into
the cabin, she starts feeling ill and her hair suddenly starts graying. Folks
start whispering about Cecil and some even warn her outright. Surely, he must
be the Tatterdemalion, a life-force-consuming demon that lives in the woods,
until some naïf invites it into their home.
What
is really creepy about Lost Child is
not the is-he-or-isn’t-he question. It is the fact that so many people truly
believe there are demons lurking in the woods, here in the present day. You do
not even need demons when there are people burning trees to get the evil spirits
out. Nevertheless, Mosley nicely maintains a sense of ambiguity and uncertainty
regarding Cecil’s true nature—and perhaps the nature of our world as well.
Without a doubt, Lost Child represents
a quantum leap improvement over her previous film, the vacuous mishmash, The Brass Teapot. This is a gritty,
emotionally intelligent film that has a strong sense of place, geographically
and culturally.
Leven
Rambin is terrific as Sreaves. If you want an example of “strong but vulnerable,”
she delivers to a “T.” Fortunately, neither Rambin or Mosley overplay Sreaves’
PTSD, forgoing the typical twitching and night terrors. Instead, it is
something more matter-of-fact that she will have to struggle to overcome.
Rambin also develops some nice romantically ambiguous chemistry with Jim Parrack’s
Rivers, who could be the manliest social worker ever seen in a serious drama.
Watching
Lost Child brought to mind Robert
Love Taylor’s yet-to-be-properly-appreciated novel Blind Singer Joe’s Blues. They both usher us into a world where “hants”
and infernal ones have a palpable effect on people, regardless whether they are
real or not. Recommended for fans of Southern Gothic at its most hardscrabble, Lost Child is now playing in New York,
at the Cinema Village.
