Wildflower

Honestly I was surprised to see the rating on here, my friends and I thought this was a really sweet and enjoyable film. The cast works well together and there is consistent humour throughout. This is a heartwarming story about family, and if you're in the mood for a feel-good film I would recommend the watch!

It does contain some mature themes and language which means it's probably not best for young children, but I think the film handles these topics in a way that isn't gratuitous or inherently explicit. The film is not shying away from very real and human topics and I appreciate that they do not overly censor these issues, but at the same time it does not glorify them either. Wonderfully handled, tbh!

Wildflower, Matt Smukler's debut feature, follows Bea, a plainspoken teenager navigating life with neurodivergent parents. The film follows Bea's high-school drama, cheeky romance, and the struggles of her best friend and relatives. The film is inspired by Smukler's family and features a cast of distinctive characters. Kiernan Shipka leads an endearing cast in her animated portrayal of Bea, who lies comatose in a hospital bed, surrounded by worried family members. The film explores Bea's life from childhood to the recent past, narrated by her omniscient subconscious in VoiceOver. Bea's intra-family relations, resentments, and communication style are explored through flashbacks. Her feuding grandmothers Loretta and Peg, her neurotic aunt Joy, and her anxious husband Ben, are all involved in their bickering. Bea's parents, Sharon and Derek, are calm and collected, maintaining a steady faith that their daughter will wake up. Bea grew up hearing other adults describe her parents as "special," a euphemism for neurodivergent. Bea recounts how Sharon and Derek met, the rush of their marriage, and the thrill of her birth. However, everyone else, including Peg and Earl, struggle to trust their daughter to make her own decisions. Loretta, Derek's mother, harbors animus for Sharon's family but seems less fazed. There is an unacknowledged but suffocating assumption that the new parents simply can't do it. Wildflower is a film that reinterprets the experiences of disabled characters through the perspective of a child turned caretaker, Bea. The film follows Bea's journey from her early years in a mobile community to her senior year in Las Vegas, where she learns valuable lessons about her parents and their neurotypical lens.

Bea's early years are filled with adventure and freedom, but her exposure to life outside her immediate family leads to a decrease in her tolerance for Sharon and Derek. She reads their laid-back attitude as clumsy and finds their carefree approach frustrating. After a driving lesson goes wrong, Bea is sent to live with her aunt Joy and Ben, who teach her skills she missed out on but annoys her. Wildflower quickly moves on to Bea's senior year, where she hawks school raffle tickets with her best friend Mia, hoping to win a free trip to Disney. Her attitude changes, but she still has a renewed appreciation for her parents. The film gains momentum when it settles into Bea's recent past, chronicling her romance with Ethan, a fight with Mia, her guidance counselor's insistence on college application, and a petty feud with their high school's resident mean girl. The film highlights Bea's struggle to overcome her condescending relationship with her parents and everyone around her. When she starts to see them in the same light as the rest of the world, she overcompensates by turning herself into a caretaker, resurfacing childhood resentments and revealing hard-to-swallow truths. The film culminates in a tumultuous blow-up, but relationships are repaired, amends made, and Bea learns valuable lessons along the way.

This movie is a cocktail of humor, deep feelings, anxiety, faith, romance and love. The acting of every single character is so convincing that you will instantly get absorbed into the story. The main topic is love, unconditional love. The movie breaks down existing stereotypes to show what really matters in this plane of existence. While money and good looks have always been overwhelmingly advertised in the film industry, here we are presented with two people who could be anyone's family member or neighbour. The couple is special in many different ways, primarily because they have managed to preserve their purity in a world which constantly pushes people to control one another for an hypothetical greater result. But guess what? We are all connected and in critical moments, when things get totally out of control, all we are left with is each other.

This was really good - just across the board good. And it's true - it's about a real family. It's very well done - we enjoyed it start to finish - but it does get better towards the end. Anyhow - excellent movie - amen. I hope more people review and bump up the ratings - because this is way better than it currently shows!!! It's sweet, it's fun, and again it's true - really enjoyed it. And that's about that. And now I'm rambling to hit my minimum character requirements - I really don't need to type 600 characters - to say whether or not I enjoyed a movie. But again - we really enjoyed this - lots of fun!

I ended up watching this movie, in part because of the positive individual reviews I read here, which seemed much more enthusiastic that the 6 rating attached to the movie, and I'm so glad I did. This was an uplifting, emotional, and funny indie drama with an earnestness that I appreciate so much. I thought the script was really well-written, weaving a story through a complex set of conditions and emotions, giving the characters weight, and interest, and complexity. I was rooting for them, and frustrated with them, and feeling compassion for them, and understanding their humanity, all from moment to moment. The casting was superb, and the performances from everyone were so solid, particularly Shipka, who is an actor of great depth, and I can't wait to see her career grow over the years. So many moments made me feel, and it's one of my favorite movies of the last decade.