Mason (Noah Urrea), left, and Jameson (Kolton Stewart) take a selfie together as they sit near Mitch’s grave in A Wake.
A Wake tells the story of a family dealing with death
TAMMYE NASH | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com
It’s been a long time since I felt like I needed to stay closeted, to keep my sexual orientation hidden from others.
It’s been even longer since I had to struggle with all of the usual teenage angst coupled with the added weight of knowing I was “different,” and struggling to keep my difference hidden.
And yet, despite all the years that have passed since then, A Wake took me right back to those days, to that angst and that fear. And that’s what it meant to do.
A Wake, a new LGBTQ family drama from Scott Boswell, is a quiet but intense story of how one teenager’s death impacts the rest of his family and the boyfriend most of his family never knew about. And all of what happens in the movie takes place in one day — the day that, eight months after his death, Mitchel’s family is gathering for a wake, organized by his sister, to remember and honor him.
The film opens with a dream sequence, narrated by Mason. At first, I thought he was dreaming of a dead lover; then I realized the other guy in the dream was his twin brother, Mitch. Mason believes that Mitch is trying, through his dreams and in other ways, to reach out to him from beyond the grave. But Mitch — the ability to connect and communicate with Mitch — is always just out of Mason’s reach.
It would be bad enough for a teenage boy to lose his twin brother. But it’s obvious from the start that there is some secret Mason is hiding that makes his loss even harder to bear and his efforts to connect to his dead brother even more wrenching and painful to watch.
After Mason, you are introduced to Molly, the younger sister who obviously adored her brothers and who, in the eight months since Mitch’s death, has undergone the most outwardly obvious changes. Molly is the one who has insisted on organizing the wake, and aggressively OCD tendencies are sad and almost frightening, especially when you see her in flashbacks as a joyful, loving child. Along with Molly you meet Vanessa, the kids’ stepmother, and their grandmother Loretta, mother of the twins actual mother, who died when the twins were 4 years old.
Only Molly calls Vanessa “Mother;” the others, including older sister Megan, who comes in from Los Angeles for the wake, call her Vanessa. (Maybe that’s because Vanessa is Molly’s actual mother? I was never sure about that part.) Vanessa, it turns out, refuses to let the family members talk about anything sad — that includes their late mother and Mitch’s death by “accidental overdose.”
There is the father of the family of course, and then there is Jameson, Mitch’s boyfriend, who nobody in the family but Mason and Molly knew about, and who kept it secret from his grandfather, with whom he lives, that his friend had died and that he was going to the wake.
More secrets. They all have their secrets. And the secrets are tearing apart both the family as a whole and individual family members.
To top it all off, this is a “religious family,” with the adults and Molly all relying on “Pastor Rob” to provide them with spiritual guidance and healing. But it’s obvious that Pastor Rob, who attends the wake with his too-perfect wife Sheila, has secrets of his own, too. That adds another level of secrets, of course, not to mention anxiety and frustration.
Everything comes to a head at the wake, and all those secrets that have been festering in the dark finally spill over into the light. It isn’t pretty; but lancing a boil to let the healing begin rarely is.
The only character who won my full sympathy throughout the film was Jameson (Kolton Stewart) who lost the guy he loved and never had a chance to openly grieve.
Grandmother Loretta (Bettina Devin) came close but then ruined it toward the end. I wanted to feel some sympathy for Vanessa (Emilie Talbot), but maybe I’ve seen too many self-centered and self-absorbed people who have no problem making others uncomfortable as they focus on being comfortable themselves.
Dad Richard (Kevin Karrick) and sister Megan (Megan Trout) pull at your heartstrings, and you understand why they behave the way they do. But at the same time, they are adults. They have the ability to take control of things and make a difference, but they don’t. Molly (Sofia Rosinsky) is just a kid manipulated by adults and her brothers toward their own ends, so yeah, she deserves sympathy and gets it. But at the same time, that OCD Molly is kinda scary and irritating.
And then there are Mason and Mitch (both very ably portrayed by Noah Urrea). Your heart breaks for them both for different reasons. But as the story unfolds, it becomes obvious they both could have changed their circumstances and themselves for the better.
Like I said, A Wake is a very quiet film. But it has a significant weight that stays with you after the credits roll.
You don’t have to be a surviving family member of someone who killed themselves, and you don’t have to be LGBTQ — closeted or otherwise — to see yourself in at least of the characters attending this wake. Because all of us have lost someone or something. And all of us have secrets that we keep.
