I hate panning a film like this. I know you’re meaning well, film; I know your heart’s in the right place. I know you want to educate and shine a light on one of the unseen ills of society. I know you care. It shows with every bloated line of dialogue. Unfortunately, here is my impression of post-production for A Mouthful of Air:
“ Oh, hey, isn’t this nice. Did we make a tear jerker or what?”
“I suppose…do you think maybe we should have had a plot?”
“Hmmm. Hadn’t considered that. Whaddaya reckon? Is it too late?”
“Well, if we added a plot now, we’d probably have to shoot a bunch of new stuff and maybe change a few things around…”
“That sounds like a lot of work. Let’s just leave it as is.”
“Fine by me.”
This film is about suicide, but only on a theoretical level. A Mouthful of Air never really gets into details; its focus is aftermath and life methodically going on post suicide attempt. Julie Davis (Amanda Seyfried) suffers from postpartum depression. The depression becomes so intense that we join the film with Julie in the hospital following her suicide attempt while her newborn approaches his first birthday.
As an audience, we’re apt to be sympathetic. We never lose this, but I found it tough to tell the difference between “one who is actually feeling pain on the inside and trying not to show it” and “one who isn’t feeling any pain at all.” Julie seems to be fooling herself for the most part, but it’s hard to tell. She and her husband, Ethan (Finn Wittrock, the dramatic version of Max Greenfield), share smiles and arguments, but dance around the bigger questions: Why did you do you this? And are you going to try again?
The picture builds up to a huge reveal – I say “huge” because there is literally nothing going on in this film. They paint rooms. They go to a party. They discuss medication. They exist. Waiting for an actual event to occur is darn near torture. So we have Julie build up to her big reveal and …I won’t say it’s bonkers. I mean pain is pain. I can’t tell you how to feel about something. But Julie’s take on her own post-partum depression is –to say the very least- unsatisfying.
And considering Amanda Seyfried spends the rest of the picture behaving as if the suicide attempt belonged to somebody else — she’s a way different person now — it comes off as “huh?”
Other than the complete lack of plot … I swear the biggest plot point in the film is: “Are you taking your medication?” Julie doesn’t strikes me for one second as somebody who actually has or might commit suicide. I KNOW this is part of the message I don’t need a lecture here about how I didn’t get it. i.e. That the outward signs of suicide are not always present. But this is a movie; we are omniscient observers. We get to see the stuff that even her husband or mother doesn’t see … and I’m not seeing it.
Julie Davis is an author of children’s books – that’s the big irony the film wants to clue us to. Julie’s career is entirely about penning coping mechanisms for small children and yet has not authored one for herself – deep, right? We are supposed to get from this that surface happiness hides greater depths of pain. Mostly for me, however, this film was two hours long all to exhibit one paragraph in a psychological journal … and a neatly-packed pristine volume at that. This is close to -if not- the most sanitized look at suicide that I can point to. Writer/director Amy Koppelman is making a deliberate and exaggerated contrast between the immaculate exterior and the turmoil-ridden interior. Here’s the thing—if I don’t believe there’s a world of turmoil going on inside Julie, the whole thing just looks fake to me.
“You can’t know what’s going on inside a person.” No, I can’t. The film made darn sure of that … but it makes it that much more difficult for me to care if I’m never let in on the secret, either.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression
For another indulgent movie session
From this tale I flee
A screen filled with ennui
I might have post-boredom depression
Rated R, 105 Minutes
Director: Amy Koppelman
Writer: Amy Koppelman
Genre: The one where we learn a valuable lesson even though the picture isn’t saying anything
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Suicide survivors
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Cinephiles
