Breakup Season
Breakup Season
Relationships are always complicated, and one can get emotional simply by thinking of where to begin the process of separation. However, Breakup Season, the latest film from writer/director H. Nelson Tracey, asserts that there is no good time to break up with someone.
Breakup Season, which premiered at the Desertscape International Film Festival in St George Utah, is a heartwarming tale that looks at the positive and negative elements involved in the act of breaking up with a partner. In this film, Ben (Chandler Riggs of The Walking Dead) and Cassie (Samantha Isler of Captain Fantastic) are the main characters and they inevi tably head to Ben’s family home in rural Oregon for the night.
Initially, their relationship appears to be very nice, but it soon becomes clear that while Cassie is the one in love, Ben is only being entertained. As if the insecurities were not enough to make Cassie put her foot down the succeeding days only make matters worse and by the end of the week, she tells Ben to keep his distance while she makes plans to return home for the holidays.
Unfortunately, a blizzard hits and as the roads become impassable, Cassie realizes she will have to spend the rest of Christmas without any of her loved ones, or worse, with her now ex-boyfriend and his extended family.
In the following days, Ben seeks solutions in order to get things back on their course and gain closer proximity to Cassie who, in contrast, seems only to be tougher than before. It is a process of back and forth that has been crafted so well that neither party appears to be in the right or wrong. Such are the terms towards a love that is no more.
But the Season of Breakup is not just about the relationship between Cassie and Ben. The relational dynamics that Tracey plays around with facilitate the week’s struggles for the pair as outlined in the central relationship.
Also back for the Christmas period is Ben’s mother Mia (Brook Hogan) and father Kirby (James Urbaniak, Venture Bros, Oppenheimer) whose adorable relationship makes the chilly relationship that has grown between Ben and Cassie seem all the more strange. Performance wise, Hogan and Urbaniak are extremely comforting and tender here. They rock their son and are ready to hear Cassie. As they are drawn into conversations and the act of each other, Cassie and Ben start to grasp how the rest see their relationship.
Ben’s siblings are also grappling with their own romantic struggles, both past and present. ‘Liz’ (Carly Stewart) is in a relationship that seems to be on a plateu and older brother ‘Gordon’ (Jacob Wysocki) is home after a divorce. This week, Cassie and Ben want to blame the other for how events transpired. This destructiveness makes Ben want to fix things, making Ben cross with how much Cassie wants to go away from the situation.
The feeling of helplessness radiates from the walls, and this is what Ben does every time he talks to his kids while being a dad. The pain is painfully human. It is for this reason that Riggs’ performance as Ben is so impressive. He knows how to be emotional without over exerting himself, and as far as chances go, there is no one better than Cassie Isler to be in that role. And that’s not even the best part, Urbaniak has the most incredible ability to make light of a dark situation.
Urban Thom who played ‘Urbaniak’ has equally impressed with his dramatic scenes, especially the ones with his on-screen children. One of those Touching moments which cut across the walls of age or status is the one where Kirby goes out to walk around the park with Ben, a frustrated father trying to make sense of his circumstances or when Kirby has an intimate yet quite casual conversation with Gordon despite it being late and cold outside. With warmth, humor, and tact Urbaniak says a good deal about the complexity of a father-son relationship.
In all these character moments, the film’s writing may shine the most. In a genre where the conventions seem to supplant any innovation, as they do here more often than Tracey’s script here allows the characters to wrestle not just with each other but with themselves. And it is this struggle within themselves; And it’s a struggle out there as well to settle the real questions of love, actually all between the characters themselves, but they have to build a bridge to find resolution.
None of the characters depicted on screen runs the risk of being archetypical in a scripted movie, ennui-inducing for the audience. It tends to feel, almost all of them, that there is an organic quality that makes its words convincing, which allows for some aspects of unpredictability right to the end. Absolutely anything can happen because characters as Tracey depicted are real people with real struggles that we can see on screen.
In the final moments of the movie, Tracey draws attention to the timeliness of his moves, making the right decision with his characters, pretending to begin from the left but going to the right instead. It naturally progresses to the breathtaking ones which serves to relief the audience as a satisfying and optimistic ideal of some beautiful romance dramedies from the past and makes this one a classic of the line of (500) Days of Summer.
Considering the initial reactions to a noticeable work like Breakup Season, one would be compelled to ask what the next films from Tracey’s pen would be based on. This reviewer, for instance, cannot wait to find out what comes next because if it is half as enjoyable as this, we are in for a treat.
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- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Country: United States
- Director: H. Nelson Tracey
- Cast: Chandler Riggs, Samantha Isler, James Urbaniak
