Ghostlight (2024 | USA | 110 minutes | Kelly O’Sullivan, Alex Thompson)
Directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson leverage the chemistry of a real-life family in crafting a drama about a working-class Chicago-area household. When we first meet the family in a principal’s office as they’re still reeling from the aftershocks of an unspecified trauma and the mounting stress of a looming lawsuit.
They’ve been called in to address their snappily belligerent daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) who faces expulsion from her private high school for a violent bathroom break incident. We sense immediately that exasperated mother Sharon (Tara Mallen) is at her wit’s end, barely holding her grief at bay for the sake of others. Gruff but caring father Dan (Keith Kupferer) has receded into his construction job, jackhammering concrete all day while repressing his turbulent feelings.
When his pain eventually erupts through his thick emotional callus in a fit of public rage, he catches the attention of prickly actress Rita (Dolly de Leon). The alchemy of her grounded presence and his barely suppressed desperation convinces him to gingerly dip his toes into a ramshackle community theatre program’s production of “Romeo & Juliet.” Dan’s gently comedic entry into the dramatic arts, complete with its array of colorful characters, proves to be an unexpected outlet for catharsis. With acting so outside his usual frame of reference and deeply in need of something of his own, he keeps his trysts to rehearsals a deeply held secret to comic effect.
The secrecy of the caper, the film’s deliberate obfuscation of the family tragedy, and Dan’s resilient lack of familiarity with the basic plot points of Romeo & Juliet occasionally finds the film teetering toward disbelief. But Keith Kupferer lends such depth of performance to his closed-off and obtuse character that you barely mind the contrivances required for the emotional payoffs to hit. Directors O’Sullivan and Thompson display a intimate knowledge and respect for the theater scene and the cinematography reflects the magic that occurs when devoted amateurs cobble together something special from scant resources, centuries old plays, and temporary stages.
In real life, as onscreen, the core trio are husband, wife, and daughter, all enmeshed in the dramatic arts. (Keith Kupferer is an actor of stage and screen; Tara Mallen is an actor and founder Chicago’s Rivendell Theatre Ensemble; Katherine Mallon Kupferer, recently of Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. had acted with her parents separately, but this is the first time they’ve all been cast together.) These connections lend an immediate sense of credibility to the onscreen family dynamic. Their quirks, barbs, anxieties, and affections gain a sense of additional authenticity through their instant familiarity. As the gateway to the theater troupe, Dolly de Leon an incredibly sensitive and nuanced ambassador whose performance makes room for Rita’s own history or ambition and disappointment.
Filmed with rare intimacy, the mounting parallels between Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy and the real pains of a wounded family culminate in a rousing testament to the enduring and transformative power of treading the boards.
Review originally published as part of the SIFF guide. Ghostlight opens in Seattle theaters on June 21, including a return to SIFF Uptown, where it was a festival favorite.