TRIGGER ALERT: SUICIDE

Fiona and Jane have been friends forever. They’ve done everything together, from kindergarten to running their start-up business. Jane’s had a series of failed relationships with men while Fiona fell in love with and married Gemma and they’re raising their son, Bailey. Everything is perfect. Happy. Until Fiona’s completely unexpected suicide.

Left behind with her grief and her confusion, Jane’s only way to try to make sense of things is to help Gemma with Bailey. As all three of them suffer from an inability to understand not only how Fiona could have made such a choice, but also how they could’ve missed any signs at all, they do the best they can and create a somewhat uncomfortable family unit. And as Jane and Gemma try to help each other navigate the mix of emotions they each feel, something more develops between them, even as they each understand they’re simply trying to fill the void Fiona left in both their lives.

Writer-director Kelly Walker knows grief. It’s clear in the tone of the film, the long pauses, Jane’s quiet moments when you know her heart is just shrieking inside her head, Gemma’s attempt to go back to her normal job as if her life didn’t just implode around her, and the way the three characters circle each other, doing their best to go on with life, while at the same time wondering how in the world they’re supposed to do that. All the while, they hold tightly to each other. Perhaps too tightly.

~ Georgia Beers