Suze: Sweet Drama Soars on Filial Love Found in an Unlikely Place
By Kim Hughes
Rating: B+
A shamelessly feel-good movie buoyed by dynamic, lived-in performances, Suze offers emotional rewards far grander than its simple story might suggest. And it’s an honest pleasure to watch. (And to hear about… scroll down for links to interviews with the film’s stars).
From acclaimed Canuck husband-and-wife writer-directors Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart, Suze explores familiar themes in a novel way. Susan (Michaela Watkins) could be forgiven for suspecting the universe has singled her out for misery.
Newly divorced after discovering her husband in flagrante delicto with another, younger woman, she is also facing the steamroller of menopause while dealing with a bratty, entitled teenage daughter.
Inopportunely, Susan learns from her ex and his new missus that daughter Brooke (Sara Waisglass) will be leaving home and going away to university. Susan hopes to spend as much time as possible with Brooke before she leaves, but Brooke’s dreaded, knuckleheaded, slacker boyfriend Gage (Charlie Gillespie) keeps getting in the way.
Once installed on campus, Brooke promptly deprioritizes Susan and Gage in favour of her new friends. That leaves lonely Susan adrift and smitten Gage suicidal. When Gage’s brusque and uncaring father asks Susan to keep an eye on his distraught kid while he completes a work contract, Susan and Gage are reluctantly thrust into each other’s orbit.
There, they learn to plug the holes each is experiencing, in ways both practical and esoteric. That slow, sometimes sloppy but humorous process forms the backbone of the narrative. Susan becomes the nurturer troubled Gage never had, and Gage becomes the emotionally available child that caring Susan — or “Suze” as Gage nicknames her, much to Susan’s ongoing mortification — deserves.
A big part of what makes Suze a delight is its lead performances, notably Gillespie who aces a tricky tightrope walk between simpleton with a heart of gold and clinically troubled soldier masking his pain with goofiness.
Watkins, meanwhile, locates and broadcasts that very discomfiting sense people at midlife often feel when it dawns on them that they really don’t have everything figured out, a situation here compounded by an empty nest with a silence that roars.
Suze is also sharply written. In one choice scene highlighting Susan’s frustration with Brooke’s inaccessibility, we get this: “Hi honey. Why don't you take that little phone that is glued to your little hand and bring it to your little ear and fucking call me for five fucking seconds because I'm your fucking mother and it's the least you can do for the woman who laboured for 22 fucking hours and tearing up her... BEEP. ‘The mailbox is full and cannot accept messages at this time. Goodbye.’”
That’s gold, and Watkins nails it. There aren’t many surprises to the outcome of Suze but the journey to the end sure is sick, as Gage might say. Recommended.
Suze. Written and directed by Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart. Starring Michaela Watkins, Charlie Gillespie, Sara Waisglass, Aaron Ashmore, and Rainbow Sun Francks. In theatres February 23 and on demand April 2.
Watch Bonnie Laufer’s interview with Suze star Michaela Watkins and with her co-star Sara Waisglass. You’re welcome!