What is it about the sound of wind? It can be undeniably relaxing, a common setting on white noise machines. But there\u2019s something slightly menacing about it as well. Something coming. Something moving. A storm on the horizon. A pathogen traveling through the air.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The sound of wind rustling the grass and leaves is almost a character in \u201cFamily Portrait,\u201d adding to a rising tension in this unique, confidently made film that very purposefully plays more like a dream than realism. Set in the days just before COVID, it\u2019s a foreboding film, a drama that recreates the sense that something bad is going to happen or may have happened already, and the common practice of a frozen shot of a happy family doesn\u2019t capture what\u2019s happening around that single second of forced smiling. That might make \u201cFamily Portrait\u201d sound like a melodrama as hundreds of filmmakers have used events like the one Kerr does here to unpack the fragile bonds between blood relatives and those who marry their way onto family trees. But this is not exactly that movie. This is a relatively happy family. Like so many were in early 2020.<\/p>\n
Kerr\u2019s opening shot is one of the best cinematic overtures of the year. In silence, we watch a group of seemingly well-off people moving through a field, images that recall a family gathering. It\u2019s almost as if the camera can\u2019t figure out who it should settle on, giving us the POV of a participant in the event while also defining the film\u2019s fluid visual language. A character walks into a moving frame that goes too fast for her to keep up or slides over to someone else, almost like the wind is moving it. Silent at first, the sounds of the event slowly filter in as the kids play and the adults talk over one another. <\/p>\n
After that tone-setter, Kerr settles into a large family estate where relatives have gathered for an annual event: the taking of a photograph for the year\u2019s holiday card. Most scenes unfold with a static camera, almost as if someone placed one in the room to eavesdrop on a conversation \u2013 although that shouldn\u2019t be construed as a criticism of Kerr\u2019s incredibly strong eye, one that can make even these frozen shots feel more than mundane. <\/p>\n
Eventually, a protagonist emerges in the form of Katy (Deragh Campbell), who has brought her Polish boyfriend Olek (Chris Galust) home to take the family portrait. Tension seems to emerge from the fact that he\u2019s not included in the shot and that no one seems to have the urgency needed to take it with enough time for Katy and Olek to make their flight out. Conversations circle back to some of the international tension with talk of the death of a family member and a fascinating one about a photograph that may not be what it seems \u2013 you know, like how family photos don\u2019t tell the whole story too. <\/p>\n
It becomes clear that the matriarch of this clan has inexplicably disappeared. They can\u2019t take the photo until they find Mom, but only Katy seems overly concerned. Is it because of the flight she might miss, or is something stranger going on? An extended sequence in which Katy walks the grounds and swims leads to a companion shot to that opening montage in which, soaking wet, she moves through a space where she passes other family members. Again, Kerr\u2019s camera isn\u2019t locked on Katy in a traditional manner, enhancing a sense of displacement and confusion \u2013 two things that would define so much of 2020. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is it about the sound of wind? It can be undeniably relaxing, a common setting on white noise machines. But there\u2019s something slightly menacing about it as well. Something coming. Something moving. A storm on the horizon. A pathogen traveling through the air.\u00a0 The sound of wind rustling the grass and leaves is almost …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-1427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama-movies","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}