“Mickey And The Bear” Gets Under Your Skin In The Best Way Possible
As those who grew up with parents who were at best volatile or at worst abusive know, the frustrating epoch of adolescence can be made even more horrifying and vexatious when such legal guardian is either unwilling to rehabilitate into a caring human, is beyond any repair whatsoever, or both. Writer/Director Annabelle Anttanasio’s debut feature “Mickey And The Bear” deftly and beautifully weaves a heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful story, which follows a daughter’s slow but sure self-liberation from the emotional, physical, patriarchal hell of her home life created by a toxic father, and unobtrusively observes a person curiously traveling through the gloaming of childhood and into the blinding daytime of adulthood, as she solidifies her hopes, opinions, self worth, and what she’s willing to put up with. Attanasio’s film is nothing short of a marvel of acting, camera work, and character study, that engages in a mélange of cogitation and justified, righteous anger about what a child deserves from their parents, and how that child may have to grow up and learn without or despite them. This is a film that gets under your skin in the best way possible, and sticks with you like a moving pieces of music does; at first on a gut level, and then even more as you deconstruct how every layer works together to create a whole.
The eponymous Mickey (Camila Morrone), a teenager living in rural Montana with her father Hank (James Badge Dale), has had to begrudgingly occupy both the role of daughter as well as that of makeshift homemaker following the death of her mother years before the events of the film. She does the family’s laundry, cooks for Hank and herself, and fills his pill divider each morning with his oxycontin which, while prescribed for a noticeable leg injury, seems to have lead to an opioid addiction. Alongside that problem, Hank, a boorish Iraq war veteran, spends his days drinking, playing first-person-shooter video games, singing at karaoke bars, and the like. Mickey’s task related burden is compounded by having to care for Hank, who’s often drunk or sometimes close to OD-ing, and also by his general abusiveness, as seen through his authoritarian style of parenting, and his constant violation of personal boundaries, whether they be physical or personal; he is just as prone to put his face disconcertingly close to his daughter’s as he is to purposefully impede her romantic relationships. The movie doesn’t have much of plot per se, instead it depicts, at a deliberate but not meandering pace, Mickey attempting to create some sense of normalcy in her life, as she diligently works at a taxidermy studio, applies for college, dates then breaks up with a lecherous classmate, but then begins seeing a decent boy named Wyatt (a charming Calvin Demba), all while things fluctuate from bad to worse in regards to her father’s behavior and health.
Morrone is astounding in her role here, in part due to her playing Mickey’s alternating, and sometimes concurrent gentleness and rage, in a way that’s not incongruous- you’re seeing a character with an entire human range of relatable emotions that aren’t mutually exclusive. Mickey isn’t played as a person on a page, she’s played as a human with a history and an inner life that the audience isn’t always privy to the details of, but we know it’s there. Morrone suffuses her character with wandering, calculating eyes that seem to see right into each person’s intentions, and a confident voice and cadence which indicate a girl who’s seen too much trauma for her years, but isn’t about to let that destroy her life; she wants to have intimate conversations with boys her age, she wants to get an education, she wants to thrive as an adult, and if her entire demeanor doesn’t convince you she will, then you’re missing something. This is a performance that exists in vast gradients of subtlety and boldness which add up to something unforgettable. Dale’s performance is quite a feat too, working well with the director to expose Hank’s machismo, tendency for emotional and physical violence, and disdain for several basic human courtesies (like privacy and autonomy), in addition to his deep sadness, sense of loss, and what may on some level be real love for Mickey, but which has actually changed into dependence on her, all imparted without excusing his actions or humanizing him too much. We know he’s a complete bastard, and at no point does the film say that is at all a debatable or neutral thing.
Attanasio’s choices with framing are also, for lack of a better word, really creative and thought provoking. She uses an aspect ratio which occupies a screen space just a little wider than it is tall, creating a compact rectangle, which makes this film’s close ups all the more effective, and seems to mirror the scope of the narrative; it’s a small story taking place in a small town being shot through just as small of a perspective. A few times the director and her cinematographer Conor Murphy surreally convey characters’ literal viewpoints and focuses, where we see the back of actors’ heads as they go about a task or stare into the distance, with the background a vast blur. This Director/Cinematographer duo also construct one of the most incredible, virtuoso long shots I’ve ever seen, not one which is lengthy for its own sake, but which slowly builds tension, the camera circling around Mickey, Hank, and Wyatt, as the nervous daughter introduces Wyatt to her father, and as Hank oozes surfeit, passive aggressive chumminess and intimidation to the point of making us worry he could lash out at any second, and the blood-reminiscent pie stain on his mouth doesn’t help. This scene will undoubtably make your butt eat your seat cushion out of utter anxiety. The movie is mostly neorealist in style, and whereas some films of the same type would have little to no music, Attanasio makes the unique choice of including peppy Pop and Rap songs in the soundtrack, queueing us into Mickey’s youthful spirit and also lightening the load of a film that, in other, less capable hands, could have been prodigiously pretentious.
Mickey is a kind of female character we don’t see enough in modern films, one who is indeed intelligent and headstrong, but who also is imperfect, makes mistakes and learns from them, and who is not an inerrant heroine who’s personality is flattened into the “sarcasm as character depth” trope which passes for feminism in many contemporary mainstream films. Her making herself tolerate Hank’s behavior is not at all a mistake, but it is a self destructive action which Mickey later on learns is such, and grows from that knowledge. The questions of the film become, “Will Hank ever change for the better? Will Mickey finally leave him and begin a healthy life?” We gather that no matter how much this father loves his daughter, and how proud of her he is, the wisest thing Mickey can do is to take care of herself for once. The film posits that unconditional love is not the end all be all of caring for children- one has to make an effort to mature alongside them if they have any chance of nurturing and maintaining a lasting, truly loving relationship. The last shot of the film is the most optimistic thing in “Mickey And The Bear,” indicating with movement and Morrone’s indelible facial expressions a sense of a new beginning, excitement, and personal progress.
I believe it’s important to note that director Annabelle Attanasio is all of 26 years old, a fact which is enough to simultaneously inspire young filmmakers everywhere (like me), and also make them question what the hell they’re doing with their lives (also like me). For context, the famed auteur Paul Thomas Anderson was 28 when he made his 1st feature film “Hard Eight”. This isn’t to say that Attanasio is “the next Paul Thomas Anderson,” but to say she seems like she’s something even better: a young woman Writer/Director who deserves to be lauded just as much, if not more than her usually male precocious predecessors, based not only on a sense of gender equity and respect, but also on a sense of her creating a more original, challenging, and effective film than most of her insular old-fart-film-bro peers could ever muster on even their best day.
