Change in the Air

I like Rachel Brosnahan, here she plays Wren, a mysterious young lady who moves into the quiet suburban neighborhood (filmed in White Plains, NY). Right away she starts to get a sack full of mail seemingly every day. When a very nosy neighbor insinuates herself into the above-garage apartment and asks what Wren will do with them she replies simply "Read them."

The overly nosy neighbor is played by Mary Beth Hurt still going strong in her 70s. But her character is hard to take and especially when she criminally steals a stack of unopened mail to read some of the letters.

The name Wren is not trivial, along with her arrival are some rare bird sighting, in one case a bird which should not ever be seen there. There is a scene where some of the letters, rolled into scrolls, seem to turn into birds that fly away. But we never really find out where the letters come from or what they are really about. Brosnahan is good in the role but the story is so obscure that the movie's message, if there is one, is lost on me.

I enjoyed the movie on a certain level, even though the neighbors are often cartoonish, but overall can't give it a high rating. I watched it on Amazon streaming, my wife skipped.

An additional thought, days later: Maybe she represented some sort of spirit, maybe the "letters" were actually prayers, and her role was to answer them or turn them into something positive. If so I still don't get the significance of them turning into birds. Or why she hid from the policeman. Or why the writer made the movie so difficult to understand.