Culture Cabinet

It’s the early 2000s in Florida. Terri Schiavo, in a persistent vegetative state since 1990 in the middle of a legal battle that has made national news, has dozens of supporters protesting the removal of her feeding tube outside Suncoast, where she is receiving hospice care. As luck would have it, Suncoast is also where young Doris (Nico Parker) and her single mother Kristine (Laura Linney) are taking Doris’s brother, who hasn’t been able to speak in years and is now unable to eat, to live out his last days. As a teenage girl who has devoted her life outside of school to taking care of her brother, Doris sees this as the happy moment when her indentured servitude is finally over and she can start her own life. For Kristine, though, this marks the beginning of the end of her time with one of her children, a time when being together is of the utmost importance and everything needs to be as perfect as possible for her dying boy. The two are at odds, and when Doris finally makes some friends at school who happen to be far above her economic status, things come to a head at the worst possible time.

Laura Chinn based the screenplay for her debut feature on her own experience, and that personal connection is evident in every frame. Chinn treats every single character, no matter how small, as a fully-rounded human being with strengths, weaknesses, and unique lives. There are no heroes or villains, just people in all their imperfect, messy glory. She even treats the meaner characters with generosity – the friends Doris makes at her private Catholic school only befriend her because she offers her house to host a hurricane party on a night Kristine is sleeping at Suncoast, and they show zero sensitivity towards the fact that Doris is from a single-parent household that can barely make ends meet. But they do accept her into their group, lend her outfits when they go out on the town, and show genuine compassion for her brother’s situation. Chinn goes out of her way to provide every character, no matter how superficial they may seem, with a moment of introspection that lets the audience see a piece of their truest self, even if no one else sees it. That generosity towards her characters allows Chinn to create a rich tapestry of life in this specific time and place, which helps the high emotions feel real.

The one place Chinn missteps is in the character of Paul Warren, played by Woody Harrelson. Harrelson’s loose, charismatic charm is a perfect foil for the uptight Doris, but the character never feels like more than an obvious device to talk about the capital-I Issues brought up in the Schiavo case and how they relate to Doris and her family. Harrelson can deliver the platitude-filled dialogue with enough conviction to give it some impact, but given Kristine’s controlling nature, it never makes sense that she allows Doris to spend so much time with a much older man that neither of them knows. An unspoken tension hangs over their scenes together because of this, and Chinn never really resolves it. While this is in line with the warmth she extends to the rest of the characters, it still feels weird with this specific character, who appears out of nowhere in the crowd of Schiavo protesters to give Doris precisely what she needs at any particular moment.

The familial connection is the real heart of the story, though, and Parker and Linney do magnificent work with Chinn’s warm, wise screenplay. Linney’s no-nonsense demeanor fits the character like a glove, and her prickliness speaks volumes about who this woman is and what she’s had to deal with. A breakdown is obviously coming, and when it does, you feel the weight of years crashing down on her. While Linney’s performance may be expected, Parker’s performance upends any expectations. Only a couple of years older than Doris, Parker effortlessly taps into the hyper-specific awkwardness of a teenage girl forced to spend most of her time at home focused on caring for other people. Even the tiniest triumph makes you root for her infectious smile to appear, especially since you can feel her constantly bracing for the proverbial other shoe to drop. When it does drop, the bone-deep despair that fills Doris feels achingly real. The fraught dynamic between mother and daughter has no one person or action on which to place blame; instead, it is the clear result of years of sacrifices and deeply held resentments on both of their parts. Parker and Linney embody this dynamic with every fiber of their beings, creating a push-pull dynamic between them that can turn on a tiny gesture or whispered word.

All of this is to say that when the inevitable happens and Suncoast goes for the emotional jugular, the pain feels genuine and the emotional catharsis feels earned. All storytelling is inherently manipulative, but Chinn is upfront about where this is going: Doris’s brother will die; it’s just a matter of when. As in any good tearjerker, it happens at the least opportune time, leading to a moment of internal crisis, a race against time, and an emotional goodbye. Chinn’s execution of this sequence at the end of the film serves as the culmination of all the subtle work she has done prior, and the lived-in performances from Parker and Linney seal the deal. You’ll need a whole box of tissues when you watch Suncoast, but you’ll cry the kind of tears that somehow make you feel better. Chinn’s finely calibrated feature debut hits all the right notes. Hopefully, her future projects will showcase the same sensitivity on display here.