| I wasn’t sure that a movie about breaking up over Christmas could work as a drama, but it really does. The emotion is all here, the realness and relatability are here. This is a well written movie that perfectly captures that moment when one person is ready to move on and the other person isn’t. It might not be anybody’s fault, but family can both perpetuate the problem and soften the blow. | | 2024
Directed by: H. Nelson Tracey
Screenplay by: H. Nelson Tracey
Starring: Chandler Riggs, Samantha Isler
|
Ben (Chandler Riggs) has invited his girlfriend Cassie (Samantha Isler) home with him to a small town in Oregon to spend the Christmas break with his family. You can tell she’s not particularly happy from the start, but maybe it’s the cold or the desolateness of the small airport where they land or Ben’s brother being late to pick them up. Cassie’s originally from Chicago, but went to school and then settled in LA, so La Grande, Oregon is going to be a big change.
At first you’re probably wondering if Cassie is so unhappy with Ben in the first place, why did she even bother coming with him. But later the film drops some small comments about Cassie’s family and it’s clear why she’d be so desperate to make a trip like this work. She couldn’t hold off any longer because Ben crossed too many lines too early. So now they’re broken up, in the country, two plane rides away from anywhere Cassie could consider home, and all roads closed due to a blizzard and a multi-vehicle collision.
I was in tears very early on and then remained in tears for the rest of the movie. Both Cassie and Ben are sympathetic characters. Cassie’s mess is not entirely her own doing, I would have probably done the same as her, but Cassie’s mess is also not entirely Ben’s doing, he was oblivious to a lot of shifts within Cassie as most young men are prone to be. Now Ben is heartbroken and can’t understand how to make things better, and Cassie has no choice but to make the best of a bad situation.
One of the big reasons this whole movie works is because Ben’s family is normal. The siblings have their own oddities but nothing about Ben’s family is extreme in any way. They are not a movie family, they’re just a family. A family that Cassie would love to call her own, but she can’t let herself get too close because she knows there is no future with Ben.
Meanwhile, Ben’s sister has a boyfriend she’s desperately clinging on to, and Ben’s brother has an ex-girlfriend that he’s trying to pretend he’s over, and Ben himself is both simultaneously trying to get over Cassie and trying to win her back. That unsurprisingly doesn’t work especially since he’s unable to follow his dad’s perfect advice – do nothing. But Ben is a planner, he sucks at doing nothing.
The characters in Breakup Season are all so well written and there is an honesty and genuineness to everything in this movie, that the emotion is real and engrossing. It’s sweet, funny when it needs to be, and just an earnest look at breaking up.
|
