Year: 2024

Runtime: 109 minutes

Written and directed by: Laura Chinn

Starring: Nico Parker, Laura Linney, Daniella Taylor, Ella Anderson, Ariel Martin, Amarr, Woody Harrelson

By Sarah Manvel 

Nico Parker won the Special Jury award for Breakthrough Performance from the Sundance Film Festival for her work here in “Suncoast,” which is entirely deserved. The movie entirely hangs on her performance because, in a rarity for a movie about such a high-pressure family situation, there are only limited sequences from her mother Kristine’s (Laura Linney) point of view. And that’s because “Suncoast” is about a teenage girl’s coming of age while her equally teenage brother is entering hospice care. And not just any hospice, but the one where Terri Schiavo was at the storm of an international controversy in 2005 about end-of-life directives and the ethical decisions people must sometimes make on behalf of their loved ones. It’s difficult to imagine a darker contrast for someone’s growing up but writer-director Laura Chinn, for whom this story is autobiographical, handles it with an expertise that belies the fact this is her debut film. 

Doris (Ms Parker) is a good kid, who fully understands the import of the situation and the stresses her mother is under. But she is still a kid, and the fact her brother’s condition is so serious doesn’t change the fact she has a lot of living to do. Thanks to a shooting, she’s been pulled from the local high school and into an expensive private Catholic school in the middle of her junior year, which means her social isolation is total. Kristine works as a waitress and Doris does the housework. In fact Doris meets all of her responsibilities, which of course does little to improve her relationship with her mother, because Kristine is stretched so thin. Ms Linney’s natural cheerful demeanour is very important here because it makes obvious what things were like for the family before all the catastrophe – Doris’s father died suddenly when she was a child, and she has her old-lady name because she was born the day her grandmother died – and it means we never doubt Kristine’s love for Doris even as they bicker relentlessly. Christopher Stracey and Este Haim’s music gently reinforces Doris’s feelings, Bruce  Francis Cole’s sunny cinematography provides an upbeat look to minimise the heaviness of the subject matter, and Sara Shaw’s editing centers Doris’s thoughtfulness in the midst of all the drama.  

Regardless of the drama, nobody’s perfect. When Kristine announces she’ll be sleeping at the hospice, leaving Doris at home by herself, and then Doris overhears some kids at her new school complaining they have no place for a hurricane party, an obvious opportunity presents itself. The other kids, namely Laci (Daniella Taylor), Brittany (a rowdily good Ella Anderson) and Megan (Ariel Martin) are quick to take advantage, but despite their wealth and insensitivity they aren’t bad either, only normal self-centered teenagers enjoying normal lives. And Doris is so responsible and Kristine so distracted that at first she doesn’t even notice Doris is having dozens of people over. As a result and to her surprise, Doris suddenly has friends, and even a potential boyfriend in Nate (Amarr). Despite her lack of money, Doris’s excellent manners and politeness gets her very far, as when she’s unable to afford a milkshake to go with her burger in a diner and the man behinds her picks up the tab. This is Paul (Woody Harrelson), a widower and a protestor on behalf of Ms Schiavo, who has seen Doris around the hospice and has personal understanding of what she is going through. They quickly develop a wholly appropriate friendship, based on mutual experience of loss and despite their different attitudes to the impact all this death has had on them. 

Ms Chinn has done a remarkable job here of taking what is clearly a painful personal story and shaping it into a Hollywood framework, with the recurring joke of a broken latch on Kristine’s truck being the most obvious example. She has done an even more remarkable job of allowing the considered issues of ethics and grief to come out of Doris’s mouth. Whether she is chatting with Paul or being put on the spot in class, Doris deeply impresses with her maturity and intelligence – as does Ms Parker. It’s a phenomenally assured performance from a thoughtful and considered actress in only her third movie role, and it’s clear she has a huge career ahead of her. Ms Linney and Mr Harrelson handle their supporting roles with all the gravitas and expertise they can bring, but this is Ms Parker’s movie to the very end. It’s wonderful to see such a difficult topic handled with care and lightness, it’s wonderful to see teenage friendship portrayed with such an organic understanding of its complexity, and it’s especially wonderful to know that from Laura Chinn and Nico Parker both there is certainly much more to come.