I confess to having mixed feelings about star – and indie darling – Joaquin Phoenix. Maybe I was put off by the fake documentary I’m Still Here, or his later, unpleasant – albeit Oscar-winning – turn as the Joker.
But I can’t deny the guy can act, and Phoenix is at the top of his game in a film called C’mon C’mon, written and directed by Mike Mills.
Photo: Screenshot
Mills made his name with two all-but autobiographical films. Beginners, starring Christopher Plummer, was about his gay Dad, while 20th Century Women, starring Annette Bening, was about his free-spirit Mum.
C’mon C’mon is about his son.
No, Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t play an 11-year-old boy here. That job goes to an astonishing young English actor called Woody Norman. Phoenix plays his troubled uncle, suddenly saddled with baby-sitting duties for an indefinite period.
The slow start sets up Uncle Johnny’s job. He and two colleagues are conducting a nationwide investigation of kids’ attitudes for Public Radio.
Johnny has just wrapped up in Detroit when he gets a call from his estranged sister Viv in Los Angeles.
Viv is called away unavoidably, Johnny reluctantly agrees to look after her son Jesse.
Except there’s a problem. He’s never had to deal with parenting before – he’s certainly had little guidance from his own dysfunctional mother. And Jesse can be a bit of a handful.
For example, Jesse has an alarming habit of pretending he’s not simply an only child, but that his siblings have all died recently.
His mother may be used to this rather macabre way of preparing for bedtime, but Uncle Johnny freaks out completely.
But Johnny is spending quite a lot of time freaking out. Jesse won’t stop talking for a start, he often suddenly disappears – most disconcertingly in the middle of a crowded city street – and he’s also got a child’s “insatiable curiosity” in spades.
Meanwhile, his mother’s time away seems very elastic. Days are turning to weeks…
Adding to the stress, the Public Radio project picks up urgency. Johnny has to travel to New York, and then to New Orleans.
And with no childcare support, that means Jesse’s coming too.
Fortunately, Jesse seems keen to go – at first at any rate. He also starts to engage with the whole idea of radio interviewing.
You’re reminded that the two dominant aspects of C’mon C’mon – sound-only radio and the film’s black and white photography – are mostly entirely alien to someone Jesse’s age.
The key to the film is watching Phoenix take Johnny from hopelessly out of his depth and left behind, to first catching up, and then belatedly listening to, Jesse.
Even Phoenix-sceptics will find themselves finally won over – it is very well acted, even if the trailer does the film no favours. C’mon C’mon is nowhere near as mawkish as this makes it sound.
In fact the star performance is Oscar nominee, 11-year-old Woody Norman. Apart from anything, his American accent is flawless – take that Benedict Cumberbatch! – but he gives the character of Jesse guts and dimension - everything asked of him in other words.
And, perhaps again unlike the trailer, C’mon C’mon earns its occasional need for a hanky. Against all odds, it’s genuinely engrossing.
