“Welcome to the Rileys” presents a very American-style movie
which seems almost from a different era.
It kinda’ is, considering that in
the speed-of-light movement of media in 2019,
a film from 2010 seems light years
behind the times.
In the incessant parade of Marvel Comics inspired sequels,
prequels, and whatever other money-drubbing special effects eyeball
candy is drummed into audiences, “Welcome to the Rileys” is a window to a world
of loss, patience, compassion, and possibly redemption.
The independent film project is so archaic that it relies on
superb acting by the late James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, and Melissa Leo to
make its story engaging. Nothing
explodes, rockets into the air, crashes (unless you count human ones), or
bleeds profusely (except when one of Mallory’s tricks smacks her around because
he’s not happy with the sexual services she’s expected to provide), “He
tried to stick it up my ass,” she tells Doug, who is glad there is one vice
Mallory does refuse to engage in.
Doug is the proprietor of a successful plumbing supply
chain. Lois is his wife. And ‘Mallory’ (who goes by several aka(s) is
a . . . .
1)
teen-age prostitute
2)
stripper
3)
orphan runaway from Florida
4)
substitute daughter to fill an empty space
There’s a lot of concentrated dissonance in the lives of
Lois and Doug. Since the death of their
daughter Emily in a car accident, the couple has been locked into separate emotional
boxes. Lois has not left the house for
years, not even to walk down her driveway to the mailbox. Doug bides his time through business and an
ongoing affair with a black waitress at a local diner.
It’s when Doug goes to a plumbers convention in New Orleans
that he meets Mallory in a strip club where he’s gone to hide away from his obtuse
conventioneer pals. He refuses
everything she offers beginning with a lap dance, and then graduating to just about
everything else. “Except anal, I don’t
do anal,” Mallory says.
It takes her a good long time to realize Doug is a real live
human being and a generous one to boot. Mallory
is quite a beautiful mess with her tangle of hair, sharp features, halting
bird-of-prey eyes darting around. There
are a couple of camera shots where you realize Doug may be a better man than
you are. Not having seen Kirsten
Stewart in those fantasy flicks, I wondered if that was a body double climbing
onto Doug’s lap in the seedy private room of the strip club. Yikes, there was
one shot where I’d definitely lose my religion — but not to digress.
Doug decides to take up permanent residence in
the claptrap rooms where Mallory lives.
He calls wife Lois to tell her he won’t be home for a while. She’s so numb with shock and loss that it
hardly registers. Weeks pass and finally
Lois crashes out of her torpor and goes to look for her husband. It’s all new to her – getting into the car,
actually driving, rediscovering the outside world — but at least it’s a
beginning. Or it could be an ending the
way she drives, confusing reverse for a forward gear. So then you have Lois, Doug, and Mallory
living together in a ramshackle apartment in a rundown part of New Orleans.
Of humor there are only short precise snatches. Because it’s all very sad and
heartbreaking. It’s not the kind of pain
you can easily shuck off. It’s a
familiar kind of pain that has you caring fopr Doug, and Lois, and Mallory.
Okay, so being the
discriminating film watcher that you are, and having seen some of this in RL,
you know that Mallory (and it could be any drug addict, child prostitute, teen
alcoholic, or serial loser in your life circle) cannot suddenly change into
that wholesome mid-western fairy princess to fill that huge hole in the lives
of Doug and Lois.
But she can deliver on a ray of hope. If the film stumbled in a few spots, you quickly
forgot about it, so engaging were the actors, and so human the story.
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