NAPLES INTERNATIONAL FF REVIEW: Hannah Black and Megan Petersen’s DROUGHT celebrates the eccentricities that make a family
Drought is a sweet, hopeful little gem hailing from a land far from Hollywood: Wilmington, North Carolina. Starring autistic local actor Owen Scheid as Carl, a teenager on the spectrum with a serious passion for meteorology, filmmakers (and lead actors) Hannah Black and Megan Petersen have taken their well-earned prize money and producing aid from the Duplass Brothers and crafted a diamond in the rough of 2020, even if it is a little rough around the edges itself. Quirky, funny, moving, and proudly set in the rural southeastern United States while representing an underrepresented community, one recalls last year’s sleeper hit The Peanut Butter Falcon.
Carl and Sam (Black) are close siblings in a small town in 1993, both working at the corner grocery store and toiling under the roof of an irresponsible, drug-dealing mother (Jane McNeill) and her surly boyfriend. When said mother is arrested and Carl is fired for making a scene at the store, Sam promises to cheer him up by driving him cross-state to chase a supercell storm he’s predicted will stir up trouble somewhere. What begins as a pessimistic domestic drama, one that paints most people as insensitive or unkind to people like Carl, quickly turns into a fun, optimistic adventure as Sam and Carl are joined by jovial friend Lewis (2018 Halloween’s Drew Scheid) and their absentee older sister Lillian (Petersen) in a beat-up old ice cream truck on a road trip filled with conflicted and curiously awkward encounters.
Though it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether Black and Petersen are aiming for awkward comedy versus simply conveying their directorial inexperience, the awkwardness aids in evoking a world of ordinary (or extraordinary, depending on how you look at it) people who have trouble interacting with an American society that is bent on othering those who are different from what is considered normal. “What is normal?” an elderly man they encounter inquires of Sam as she asks for help and admits “we’re not a normal family.” His kindly chuckle indicates what all of us in the audience are thinking, that no family is normal, and that the definition of “normal” is in the eye of the beholder. Indeed, Drought is a film about family dysfunction. It’s also a film about celebrating the oddities and eccentricities and foibles that make tight knit family members so integral to one another. It’s no wonder then that the Duplass brothers were drawn to fund such a story.
The cast is made up of up-and-coming actors, some of whom show their inexperience whereas others like the Scheid brothers impress with good comic timing (Drew) and a natural pathos and humility (Owen) that can speak for many to the reality of living on the spectrum. It was absolutely necessary and inevitably refreshing to find a role like Carl’s inhabited by someone who knows such a reality, and can identify so completely with the character’s inner self. Regardless of the film’s technical deficiencies, it’s inherently involving watching these two women grapple individually with how to address Carl as a sister, as a friend, and as people who believe themselves responsible for his well-being. They live in a world of constant questioning and mistrust, and Carl is their rock, their way out of such a mess. In his world, small acts of love and kindness are enough. If only that were the case for society at large.
