Falling
Viggo Mortensen makes his debut as a director with this drama about a gay man who takes in his dementing homophobic father. The father-son relationship is still rather tense.
John lives with his partner Eric and their daughter Mónica in California, far from the traditional rural life he fled years ago. John’s father Willis, a headstrong man from a bygone era, lives alone on the isolated farm where John grew up. Willis is in the early stages of dementia, which makes running the farm on his own increasingly difficult. John takes him to his California home, so that he and his sister Sarah can help him find a place near them to relocate to. Unfortunately, their best intentions ultimately run up against Willis’s adamant refusal to change his way of life even in the slightest. They are now both facing the challenge of accepting and forgiving each other.
A complex, gripping drama exploring the subjectivity of perception and the reliability of memory in the context of family conflict. Both themes underlie its narrative structure and enhance our understanding of the characters.