Mobile Homes

I won't give anything away. The mother and son are both portrayed by extraordinary actors. Opinions seem polarised regarding the story; if you can't relate then - hey, lucky you! Anyone with any similar experience will find this gut-wrenching, but ultimately uplifting. Reading other reviews I wonder why some pepole watch anything other than shiny happy family films.

Never heard about this movie before and I don't remember how I stumbled on this one but I'm glad I did. For a drama Mobile Homes is certainly more entertaining than the average drama. Maybe because the story is about following "thrash" people, and by that I just mean not very smart and unfortunate since birth, with on top of that making wrong decisions after wrong decisions. It's always more entertaining to watch misery than happiness, that kind of voyeurism that makes us feel superior or just better. Imogen Poots did a really great job with her character, as well as the young Frank Oulton. The rest of the cast was also good. A movie with a gripping dark and hopeless story.

Ali (Imogen Poots) and her son Bone live with her volatile boyfriend Evan drifting from place to place as they perform petty scams for money. They get into cock fighting and barely escape a police raid. She manages to run away from Evan with her son and hide in an empty mobile home.

The first part with the boyfriend is so muddled that it becomes flat. The narrative drive isn't there. It's in a faux docu-style filming until it gets to Callum Keith Rennie. It feels like the acting and the story is allowed to be unleashed at that point. The story still meanders around but without Evan, it is allowed room to breathe. This is not a movie with a destination. Of course, there is the inevitable reunion because the story has nowhere else to go. It's not that compelling to watch the destructive relationship between maddening Evan and the co-dependent Ali.

Mobile Homes (2017) follows a mother and her young son as they drift between motels with the mother's toxic boyfriend. This was a beautiful and heartfelt film with great meaning. The cast did an amazing job, and the film was so visually stunning! This film felt like The Florida Project (2017) meets Nomadland (2020).

Firstly, the cinematography was beautiful and not overwhelming, and the visuals in general were pleasing to the eye. There were a lot of pretty colours and I especially liked the pale blue shots, also the lighting was calm and relaxing. In addition, I liked the framing too. The setting for the film was pretty and a good fit!

The sound was fairly good, I wasn't too fussed about the score but it definitely wasn't bad and it fit the mood well. However, I was genuinely very impressed with the sound design as there was a lot of attention to detail and a lot of effort had gone into it.

The characters felt so real, and all the acting was impressive and brilliant. This film was an intimate character study of a flawed yet relatable protagonist that was easy to root for. Imogen Poots really gave her best performance in Mobile Homes (2017). The mother-son relationship was beautiful and both actors had a lot of chemistry. I'd also like to mention the costuming, which I really liked too.

The film as a whole wasn't consistently engaging, but I still believe it succeeded as a slow-burn. The pacing was very steady and it was packed full of emotional moments. The ending was a nice close to the film and brought me to tears!

I tried to like this movie, but so much of it is so contrived an unbelievable. The characters are not likeable, they make horrible life choices and seem intent on messing up anything in their life that may seem good or normal. I actually have known people in life who made horrible decisions and were in similar situations as the characters in this movie, they did things differently and for different reasons. But their horrible choice made a kind of sense, in this movie so much is nonsensical.

The ending is a disaster. I couldn't imagine a worse ending for this film. Sad and tragic should be the plotline, not the movie itself.