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A distinctly poetic sensibility guides Mary Haverstick’s uber-femme drama about an alienated wife (Marcia Gay Harden) and her daughter, Indigo (played by real life daughter Eulala Scheel). The intimacy between Harden’s poetess mother and her wistful and willful daughter is palpable and the film’s strongest moments owe much to their chemistry. Sadly however, this period piece suffers from cloying nostalgia and an overwhelming tendency towards overstatement. As persistent as the film is with its message making, predictable poetry and elegiac (if not always elegant) directorial turns, the film still has some genuine sweetness. Theatrical prospects don’t seem massive, though bringing the film to areas with active cancer survivor communities seems a wise move. In sum, the production seems made for Lifetime or Oxygen, and that’s likely where this Home will take up permanent residence.

In the Amish country in 1969, Inga brings her daughter to the house of a family friend (Marian Seldes). In the house, the ghosts of Inga's playful father and terminally ill mother alternately beguile her and haunt her. Repeatedly she says she feels home in that house. At her current house, however, her husband Herman (Michael Gaston) offers Inga only two brands of interaction: calculated neglect and disturbed rejection. Inga’s recent mastectomy and the changes of self-image that have accompanied it have exacted a toll on her marriage that her husband seems unable to handle—as a result, both spouses self-medicate with copious amounts of Jim Beam. Indigo sees the drunkenness of her parents and takes to hiding behind furniture in observation. We see Inga do the same in flashback, peering out at her parents as a little girl. Inga remembers her father with warmth and joy, pens poems about her recollections, but neglects her mother in her stories and writings. Relating both her mother’s relentless illness and her daughter’s relentless presence (particularly when Inga drinks to forget her marital discord), the line between the present and the past, the mother and the daughter, smear, thus identifying home as a place in perpetual flux. For as psychologically insular as that may sound, our emphasis on Inga as the protagonist seldom seems tightly focused.

Helmer Mary Haverstick, whose mother’s poems we hear throughout the film, shows a stronger acumen for the small screen than the big. With moments of high drama resting on a crescendo in the predictable and distracting score, or on needlessly histrionic verbal brawls, it’s easier to imagine this film playing with commercial interruptions than with a crowd rapt for the duration of the film’s 84 minute run time. While the film’s flow is passable, the highs and the lows of its melodrama require a tolerance for flowery prose that, while not to the taste of this critic, are perfectly appropriate and share the sincerity of a story woven from personal histories.

Distributor: Monterey Media
Cast: Marcia Gay Harden, Marian Seldes, Michael Gaston and Eulala Scheel
Director/Screenwriter: Mary Haverstick
Producers: Mary Haverstick, Michele Mercure and Chad Taylor
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13 for some disturbing thematic material.
Running time: 84 min
Release date: May 1