Blue Heron is a moving and rawly believable portrait of a family
Canadian-Hungarian film maker draws on her own background in frighteningly good debut
Thursday, 25th June — By Dan Carrier
Eylul Guven in Blue Heron
BLUE HERON
Directed by Sophy Romvari
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆
THE Garden Cinema in Covent Garden – a genuinely independent and proper picture house – welcomes director Sophy Romvari to their Parker Street screens this Saturday, where she will be presenting and talking about her critically acclaimed debut, Blue Heron.
The Canadian-Hungarian film maker has drawn on her family’s background to create a moving and rawly believable portrait of a family, and the impact one member’s mental health has on the group’s dynamic.
It is also an exploration of memory as she looks back at herself as a child and how she reacted to the ripples her brother created. It would do this film a disservice to place it in a Family Drama genre: it’s a step up, a deeply human story with characters behaving in a manner that is unconsciously and immediately recognisable.
Romvari sets it in the premise of a Hungarian couple who bring their family to live on Vancouver Island. We watch as they settle in during a warm and gentle summer month, exploring a rugged and vast new world.
Told through the eyes of Sasha, (Eyul Guven) an eight year old sibling of four, oldest brother Jeremey (Edik Beddoes) lurks from the start proceedings, at first with volatile teenage menace, and then with something more worrying.
The minor irritants of the rub-along of family life become accentuated by Jeremy’s increasing eccentricity.
Romvari flags up painful behavioural tics and characteristics as she unfolds Jeremy for us to understand, and does so by considering how this impacted on the youngest.
Sometimes Jeremy plays the good big brother role. But his depressive rages also might appear without any obvious trigger points. It gives the story a constant tension – a scene where he is baking, with a beautiful piece of classical music behind it, could be read as a piece of familial bliss, or a scene from A Clockwork Orange.
It feels like the director has mined her own life deeply and she breathes life brilliantly into the character of his suffering mother (Iringio Reti). Any parent watching will step into her uncomfortable shoes. It’s frighteningly good.
Details of the Garden Cinema’s Q & A with Sophy Romvari: www.thegardencinema.co.uk/film/blue-heron/
