Mother’s Little Helpers

By: Sam Frost

Grief does funny things to people. I think most people know that by now, but seeing it on screen reiterates the normalcy of it. It helps the grieving process seem less lonely and more universal. The movie Mother’s Little Helpers wasn’t afraid to let the crazy out. In the Q&A after the film aired, writer/director/actor Kestrin Pantera mentioned it’s “that thing when you just hit your breaking point of how much you can take and you just like, psycho laugh.” That vibe pretty much sums up the whole film. It’s beautiful and creates a sense of community because it doesn’t shy away from the messy or the broken or any of it.

Sadie (Pantera) receives the phone call from her mother saying she’s dying and we immediately know Sadie’s the family “fixer.” She goes to the house to help Mom (Melanie Hutsell). She calls her estranged siblings and convinces them to come home. Then, there’s four adult children and a dying mother shoved under one roof. This inevitably causes problems and we see both new anger and old anger rise up. Sadie and her siblings Julia (Breeda Wool), Lucy (Milana Vayntrub) and Jude (Sam Littlefield) start tending to their mother’s every need, with the help of an at home nurse that comes to check in. There’s an oxygen tank, lots of medications and their mother’s unrelenting cough. They spend their days trying to aid her comfort, find their own ways to stay sane and also try to dig up the truth behind old lies.

Each character has their own moment, their own storyline that we’re following. It could have been easy to let some characters hold a bigger roll or a more well-rounded story, but each one feels full and fleshed out. Jude is on house arrest, struggling with addictions, and seemingly in love with his parole officer. Lucy is the youngest, the least connected to the family drama and sadness from their youth and has just received her medical license. Julia couldn’t wait to get away from her husband. Sadie is newly pregnant and left her husband at home, worried that her family and their stress will cause her to have another miscarriage. And last, but certainly not least, their mother is just one giant mystery, causing her kids to dive deeper and deeper into who she is and was.

In the Q&A, Pantera pointed out that the film was improvised. She chose to use a loose outline and let the actors utilize their own personal grief to drive them forward. I was shocked to hear this because the characters are so seamlessly real and dynamic that it felt impossible to not have a script and to not have spent tons of time rehearsing, but it worked wonderfully. There’s a real rawness in the film that might not have been achieved if it wasn’t such an open and collaborative project. Pantera also gave her co-stars writing credits, summing it up as “Why not?” She wanted to give credit where credit was deserved and the open atmosphere that she created around this project really paid off.

While each of the actors were phenomenal, I couldn’t get enough of star Breeda Wool. Her character, Julia, was eccentric and bizarre and overall a sense of complete confusion to her siblings. The film introduces her during a video call that Sadie uses to tell all of the siblings about their mom and Julia cannot figure out how to use the software. She’s confused and yelling and just on a completely different wavelength than the rest of her siblings and she stays this way during most of the film. There are moments, though, when Julia makes breakthroughs and shows vulnerability no one expected from her. Wool brings her best to this character.

The heart of this film is grief. It’s about grief and the ways that individual people respond to it and how there’s no one answer. I thought it was full of intensely beautiful moments, raw emotions and inevitable humor. If you’re looking for something to make you laugh, cry and scowl (at the situations, not the film), Mother’s Little Helpers is definitely for you.