The Wait
The Wait
The Wait is both gorgeously filmed and acted and annoyingly artsy at the same time. A very loose variation on Samuel Beckett’s classic play Waiting For Godot, the film mostly hovers around three adult children in differing stages of mourning four their mother, who dies of an unspecified-but-apparently-long-term illness as the film begins.
Soon after mom breathes her last breath, as youngest daughter Angela (Jena Malone) is dressing the body, older sister Emma (Chloë Sevigny) receives a call on mom’s land line. A strange woman’s voice tells Emma that everything happens for a reason and if they wait, their mother will be back.
Angela thinks it is crazy to listen to some stranger about something so important. But either in a state of total denial (or total insanity) Emma insists on seeing if this call really is some sort of supernatural intervention or prophecy.
So, instead of, you know, burying their mother, they lay her on the floor by her bed, under a blanket and some potpourri (is that supposed to cover the smell?) and they, uh, wait.
While waiting they stare out into the distance, take long walks in mom’s gorgeous rustic Oregon neighborhood, dance, fight, smoke, eat, drink, chat and flirt with some of the locals (who mostly seem just as offbeat as the family), laugh at inappropriate things, engage in foreplay, watch a far-off forest fire, bathe, play on the computer, get haircuts and plan a party for when and if mom comes back.
Teen brother Ian (Devon Gearhart) seems to want to have nothing to do with any of this, so he heads out into the woods, stalks a cute girl who works at the candy store, has a sexual identity crisis with a neighboring friend and show the kid’s dad a web video of a little girl being hit by a train.
That’s pretty much it.
The Wait is a gorgeous film, stunningly shot and set in a spectacular backwoods area of Oregon. Seriously, it would even work just as a travelogue of the area. The film is moody and quiet and just a bit too subtle for its own good.
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