Low Tide / Bassa marea (2012)
Ein 12-jähriger Junge und seine alleinerziehende Mutter führen parallele Leben. Der Junge verbringt seine Tage allein, während seine Mutter arbeitet und mit ihren Freunden ausgeht. Die Einsamkeit des Jungen ist sowohl Quelle der Freiheit als auch Grund zur Trauer. Seine Erkundungen bringen langsam den dunklen Kontrast zwischen den Regeln der Gesellschaft und den Gesetzen der Natur ans Licht. Und schon bald wird das empfindliche Gleichgewicht seiner inneren Welt durch unvorhergesehene Ereignisse erschüttert.
This quiet film is a powerful tale of solitude and neglect. The camera follows a twelve-year-old boy in his monotonous life of washing and cleaning in a poor and hot region of the USA. Questions of freedom and fate resonate, as he observes nature around him during breaks from caring for his substance-abusing mother, who barely utters a word to him on the rare occasions she is home. The simplicity of Roberto Minervini’s story-telling leaves a haunting impact.
Daniel Blanchard as the Boy captures our attention and doesn't let it go as we follow him from supermarket to care home (where he helps his mother do her job) and we peer into the homes and lives of America's neglected underbelly.
Minervini has used non-professional cast members here in Low Tide as he did in his previous work, The Passage (2011). There is thus more than a hint of the documentary about it, making our fears for its young protagonist all the greater. In a chilling scene, we see the boy dragged from his bed to partake in one of his mother's umpteenth parties, her boyfriend determined that the child should swill some beer, smoke some dope and lose his virginity. Mum passes by with barely a murmur and it is the boy who has to defend himself.
The boy is pretty much alone for much of Minervini's film and he carries both it and his mother, their roles reversed as he makes her dinner, gets her up for work and tucks her into bed when she's sick. Yet when we see them at the care home together, when his mother gives him orders he responds with a deferential "Yes, ma'am" showing that despite her apparent dissipation she is a strict and not entirely absent parent. When the boy finally does lose control the mother takes charge. We are left with the final image of them on the beach and see how repentant she is, but still with a can of beer in her hand.