At 13 years old, life can feel like an all-encompassing black hole. That’s teen angst; growing humans feel isolated in their struggles, with parents who fail to understand them and dismiss their problems as unimportant. That’s the story of Marvelous and the Black Hole, directed by Kate Tsang.
For teenage Sammy (Miya Cech), these feelings are compounded further by the recent passing of her mother. The rest of her family seems to have already moved on – her father, Angus (Leonardo Nam), is already in a new relationship with Marianne (Paulina Lule), while her older sister, Patricia (Kannon), spends her time obsessively immersed in a video game. This leaves Sammy all alone to deal with her grief and anger, which manifests in a habit of smoking cigarettes, skipping class, and rebelling against authority figures.
Marvelous and the Black Hole opens after Sammy gets caught vandalizing the school. As punishment, Angus threatens to send her to a camp for troubled teens, but he gives her one last chance in the form of a summer entrepreneurship course where she must turn one of her passions into a small business. Instead, Sammy skips class and somewhat conveniently runs into a magician named Margot (Rhea Perlman), who takes in Sammy as her protégé after claiming to see a lot of herself in the young teen. Although initially reluctant, Sammy is charmed by Margot’s shows that seem to capture the same magic that her mother’s stories once had. She slowly warms to Margot as she realizes that the magician, who has her own tragic past, is the first person to understand her. As their bond grows, Margot becomes both a friend and mentor to Sammy, teaching her magic as a way to fill the void of loss.
However, this is where the film falters. Despite director Kate Tsang’s attempts, none of these relationships feel completely genuine. Angus and Patricia are relegated to a couple character traits each, and while Margot is given more time to develop, her backstory is forced and the progression of her relationship with Sammy is rushed through in the form of a couple montages. These issues mostly restrict Margot from being anything more than a plot device that pushes Sammy along her character arc.
This leads many of the emotional beats to feel unearned. For as many artistic flourishes as the film attempts, including several animated sequences that come from Tsang’s work on series like “Steven Universe,” it is derivative and reminiscent of other coming-of-age stories centered around intergenerational friendships. The film also seems to be uncertain of who its audience is, as the inconsistent tone and dialogue prevent most of the humor from working and cause the performances to come off as childish in parts and too serious in others.
Despite these setbacks, Tsang handles Sammy and her anger with care, giving her the space to feel a complex array of emotions throughout the film. Tsang is also effective in portraying the many cultural aspects of the family, including Sammy’s black-and-white memories of Chinese fairy tales that her mother used to tell and the relationship dynamics of the family. As Sammy performs magic, it becomes apparent that the film is also aiming for more universal themes of art and creativity acting as positive outlets when life begins to feel unbearable.
These moments work well, but are too few to amount to a fulfilling experience. Marvelous and the Black Hole is sweet, but it ties up too neatly in the end with many of the resolutions lacking proper setups. And while the conventional plot wouldn’t normally be a major problem, its character development is lacking. Ultimately, there are numerous other coming-of-age films that are executed better and take greater risks than this one.
Photo courtesy of FilmRise
The post Marvelous and the Black Hole appeared first on Spectrum Culture.