<em>Viggo Mortensen (as John Peterson) and Terry Chen (as Eric) in</em> Falling.
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FALLING
Directed by Viggo Mortensen
Perceval Pictures, et al.
PALMER
Directed by Fisher Stevens
Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, et al.
WILLIS PETERSON won’t be winning 2021’s father-of-the-year award anytime soon. In Falling, the first of two recent family dramas that deal with fathers and gay (and/or gender-fluid) sons, Willis is played by Lance Henriksen, a veteran of such action film franchises as Terminator and Alien. In an early scene, a younger version of Willis whispers an apology to his newborn son John (still in his cradle) for bringing him into this Hobbesian world of struggle and suffering. This is a significant bit of foresight from a father who becomes a leviathan in his own right. Later, he blasts John with slurs like “fairy” and “fag.” Worse, he’s flatulent and extinguishes his cigarettes on the nightstand.
Falling is told in a nonchronological way, reflecting the disordered state of Willis’ mind. In one flashback—one of many traumatic memories that continue to haunt the grown-up and openly gay John—the boy takes a shot at a deer and exclaims: “I hit the sock-cucker!” Flash forward to the present, when Willis is a widower and suffering from late-stage dementia. Forced to find him a memory-care facility, John must finally confront a man as emotionally frozen as the snow-covered horse farm in which he and his sister were raised. The great Laura Linney (Tales of the City) makes a cameo as his sister Sarah who, at a family reunion, struggles to keep her cool as once again Willis comes angrily unglued.
Viggo Mortensen (as John Peterson) and Terry Chen (as Eric) in Falling.
After more than an hour of listening to Willis excoriate his loved ones, one wonders why John remains such a doormat, allowing Willis to degrade his husband Eric (Terry Chen) while doting on the men’s adopted daughter Monica. Nevertheless, Falling hits on a tragic irony, one that many people know all too well if they have to care for a parent, especially a bad parent, in a state of cognitive decline. With the roles reversed, John must protect and provide for the man who denied him such emotional bare essentials.
Viggo Mortensen wrote and directed Falling, an impressive debut for the Oscar-nominated star of Green Book and the David Cronenberg classic A History of Violence. As a director, he nurtures convincing performances from all of the main players. Indeed, the casting is spot-on, and Henriksen gives a terrifying tour de force. (In an ingenious bit of casting, the famed film noir director Cronenberg appears in the credits as Proctologist #1.)
Palmer, a second family drama, is lighter and more entertaining than Falling, largely because of the surprising synergy between Justin Timberlake (in the role of Eddie Palmer) and eight-year-old wunderkind Ryder Allen. Timberlake—yes, the former boyband singer for ’N Sync is old enough to play a bearded daddy now—is a parolee with a heart of gold. Palmer takes after his bighearted grandmother Vivian (June Squibb), who feeds and sometimes houses Sam, the little boy next door when his mother Shelly (a terrific Juno Temple) is out scoring drugs. Keep in mind that Sam does not identify as a “boy,” and for this his classmates have pegged him as “Samantha.” If only every LGBT kid alive today came equipped with the bulletproof ego that Sam puts bravely on display! For pulling that off, his character is totally original. “There are no boys on that show. What does that tell you?” Palmer asks after he finds Sam engrossed in a cartoon featuring ponies and princesses. “So?” says Sam, “I can be the first!”
Screenwriter Cheryl Guerriero claims that Palmer took more than a decade to be produced. It’s easy to see how Timberlake’s involvement expedited the process. The scene in which he teaches Sam the ukulele at his birthday party is music to the ears and eyes. Guerriero’s script is sometimes over-sweetened with fortune-cookie wisdom. Consider this kinder, gentler version of the still devastating scene from Moonlight (the Best Picture winner from 2016) in which a Black boy named “Little” asks Juan, the drug dealer and father figure, what “faggot” means. In Palmer, Sam asks: “What does ‘queer’ mean?” on a porch swing. “Well, some people say it means being different,” says Palmer. “Are you queer?” asks Sam. “Well, I’m different, that’s for sure. Hey, know what else we are? Good looking!” To the extent that it follows the ex-con’s road-to-redemption plot, Palmer feels familiar, though newcomer Ryder Allen is a revelation. Watching an eight-year-old upstage a song-and-dance pro like Justin Timberlake is truly something to behold.
Colin Carman, PhD, assistant professor of English at Colorado Mesa University, is working on a book about Jane Austen.
FALLING
PALMER
