C’mon C’mon movie review (2021) | Little White Lies

C’mon C’mon

30 Nov 2021 / Released: 03 Dec 2021

A man with a moustache embracing a young child in a busy street, photographed in black and white.
A man with a moustache embracing a young child in a busy street, photographed in black and white.
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Anticipation.

Five years since Mike Mills’ last feature is entirely too long.

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Enjoyment.

With results like these, he can take as much time as he needs.

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In Retrospect.

Truth, from the mouths of babes.

Joaquin Phoenix forms a close bond with a pre­co­cious whip­per­snap­per in Mike Mills’ gen­tle fam­i­ly drama.

Kids can be safe­ly relied on to say the darnedest things, and in Mike Mills’ lat­est fea­ture, indeed they do. But they also say every­thing else – the fun­ni­est things, the sad­dest things, the strangest things, the most won­drous things.

Pre­co­cious lit­tle Jesse (cheru­bic Woody Nor­man) often man­ages all of this at the same time, his youth­ful lack of fil­ter com­bin­ing with his born sen­si­tiv­i­ty in such remarks as when he informs uncle John­ny (Joaquin Phoenix) that the man’s not very good at express­ing his emotions.

The decep­tive matu­ri­ty of chil­dren, when played against the lim­its of how much an adult can fair­ly expect on that front, makes for gen­tle dra­ma in Mills’ study of a hurt­ing family’s uncon­ven­tion­al heal­ing. John­ny has built his career around the con­cept that our off­spring know more than we realise, though he has none of his own; Phoenix por­trays the host of a radio show who trav­els the coun­try inter­view­ing young peo­ple about their lives.

On paper, he’s the ide­al tem­po­rary guardian for Jesse once Johnny’s sis­ter Viv (Gaby Hoff­mann) needs some time for help bipo­lar hus­band Paul (Scoot McNairy) through an episode of insta­bil­i­ty. But all Johnny’s curios­i­ty and empa­thy can’t pre­pare him for the prac­ti­cal chal­lenges of time man­age­ment in chil­drea­r­ing, or the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Jesse may have inher­it­ed some of his father’s behav­iour­al patterns.

This falls into the tra­di­tion of movies about closed-off guys learn­ing to feel from the inno­cents left in their charge, but Mills skirts trite­ness by soft­en­ing Phoenix’s usu­al inten­si­ty. He’s not start­ing from a place of emo­tion­al rigid­i­ty, as made clear in his treat­ment of the sub­jects in his polite, stud­ied record­ing ses­sions. Instead, he’s mere­ly a bit sad and lone­ly, two inner holes filled with the ener­gis­ing pur­pose of sur­ro­gate parenthood.

The black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy is Mills’ big for­mal choice, its effect not dis­agree­able despite hard-to-dis­cern moti­va­tions. In prac­tice, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Rob­bie Ryan’s mono­chrome has a way of mak­ing dis­parate pock­ets of Amer­i­ca look uni­fied, despite the loca­tion shoot­ing bring­ing out their indi­vid­ual beauty.

Jesse has an odd pre-bed­time rou­tine of pre­tend­ing that he’s an orphan, talk­ing about the con­temptible con­di­tions at his orphan­age, and ask­ing if he can’t stay the night in his own bed. It weirds John­ny out the first time he sees it, and the audi­ence is right there with him, but we both come to under­stand the rationale.

In this film full of peo­ple hes­i­tant to open them­selves up, accep­tance becomes a naked plea that demands to be made every day. The tone nev­er defines the stakes in such grave terms, but that’s the key to the poten­cy of Mills’ cin­e­ma: life’s piv­otal turns come in idle moments, from incon­spic­u­ous sources. All it takes is the will­ing­ness to listen.

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