When it comes to independent dramas, it’s easy to become disillusioned through familiarity: what once seemed naturalist can come off as contrived, what once felt fresh now feels derivative. For most directors working within this space, then, the challenge seems to be not how they will break free from conventional structures and the ideas of Hollywood filmmaking, but how they will set their works apart from existing indies. Many are not up to the challenge. Is Monica Sorelle?
As a first-time filmmaker, Sorelle sets herself apart in several critical ways with her debut, Mountains. The pacing is patient, never committing fully to the potential woes of slow cinema, yet often bordering on it, with lingering shots of deteriorating households. In addition, the film operates on a fairly inert dramatic level for the most part; it’s not until the last third where we see the first truly tense scene occur, where Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) confronts his son Junior (Chris Renois) about leaving his communion party early. The friction between these two is, if anything, the primary narrative tension for most of the film. While gentrification of the family’s Haitian suburb continues as Xavier is literally a tool for its enablement as a demolition worker, Junior feels a disconnect from his family at large, feeling seduced by the American way of living significantly more than either of his parents.
This isn’t the only way that the two characters butt heads, of course, and Sorelle is careful enough not to draw too many direct parallels between their situation and the more direct and sinister act of gentrification, only displaying the changing of cultures as far as their relationship goes. Where Xavier has a strong work ethic and is determined to be seen as a success story within his community (the first act even teases that the plot will be about his relocation into a nicer, more modern house), Junior’s shows a general lack of ambition. It’s easy to write this off as laziness ‒ his father often does ‒ but, in a scene where Junior performs at a local stand-up comedy club, his idleness seems a bit more nuanced. He’s clearly aware of the tension between him and his parents, and pokes fun at it, in ways that almost come across as a bit cruel at times even, as he views himself as a rebel against many of the cultural norms of his Haitian roots.
The film’s low-key exploration of these themes is a blessing and a curse. At its most compelling, Mountains offers a patient and fully realized portrait of a community that is hanging on to its culture for dear life, juxtaposing this with generational strife. However, its occasional stiltedness and lack of resolution can be to its detriment; when Xavier comforts Junior and tells him that he sympathizes with his aimlessness despite their gigantic differences in upbringing, Sorelle seems to move on to the next scene without hearing Junior’s response, and by that point the film has already reached its ending more or less. It’s admirable that she positions this conflict as something that lacks any sort of neat resolution, yet frustrating in other ways that we don’t get the genuine tenderness that the film feels like it’s hinting towards here.
Something else that separates Mountains from similarly budgeted and plotted indie fare is the distinct feeling that we are not watching a depiction of an environment that has been researched but one that has been lived in. Sorelle herself comes from the same area as depicted in the film, with a presumably similar upbringing; someone who has seen first-hand the complex relationships that arise from a diaspora is a perfect fit for the material here. One can’t help but wonder if her later directorial efforts will feel similarly lived-in as they do here, or if she will branch out into directions not as immediately familiar to her. But while the future of the young director is uncertain, one thing that is for sure is that her debut is a pleasant exploration of ideas and characters that are close to her heart, and she is able to set the film apart from its peers by her connection to the material.
Photo courtesy of Music Box Films
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