At the cusp of leaving her job and moving away to fulfil a long-time dream of going to college, Beta (Baize Busan) receives news her father died by suicide after battling an unnamed disease. Upon getting the call, the woman reaches out to Zelda (Allison Torem), her estranged younger sister, kick-starting a succession of uncomfortable family encounters. From a stepmother who resents the birth of the two girls – the result of a two-year marriage break – to a trio of stepbrothers that stand for all kinds of mortifying White Man Stereotypes, the women are constantly dodging awkward bullets while ignoring the unhealed wounds that stand between them. 

Desperately grasping for a familial connection she can’t find in her contrasting step-family, Zelda leaps at the news that her father apparently had a brother – one he never mentioned. This uncle, through the eyes of a woman who yearns for a blood link that offers the stability she has been denied all her life, becomes a Holy Grail. Beta, on the other hand, is instantly reluctant, feeling the pull of a future too close to taste. The manhunt rapidly becomes a catalyst for bonding and, with each unravelled clue, the duo sinks deeper into the forgotten comfort of sisterhood, slowly recognising that they are the only two people in this world capable of understanding the years of unprocessed trauma resulting from their family wounds.  

Our Father is earnest, albeit erratic, its first half often overcast by an eagerness to please that does little for the narrative. The film is at its best when it allows comedy to take second place to vulnerability, with a particular scene by a piano at dawn just breathtakingly beautiful. If it had echoed this sentiment from its very start, it would have been something truly special.

RATING: 3/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Baize Busan, Allison Torem, Austin Pendleton

DIRECTOR: Bradley Grant Smith

WRITER: Bradley Grant Smith

SYNOPSIS: Two estranged sisters go in search of their uncle, a mysterious figure who may hold the key to their father’s suicide and their family’s unhappiness.

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