At The Movies: Ghostlight a fine-grained study of grief and art’s restorative power

Ghostlight (NC16)

115 minutes, opens exclusively at The Projector on Aug 15
4 stars

The story: Somewhat improbably, gruff middle-aged construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) is drafted off the street into a community theatre production of Romeo And Juliet – cast, even more improbably, as Romeo – that helps him confront and heal from a personal loss.

Dan is emotionally closed off, adrift from his schoolteacher wife Sharon (Tara Mallen). Their teen daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) is, meanwhile, having anger management issues as they anguish over a certain looming lawsuit.

Little by little, unobtrusively, the American family-in-crisis drama Ghostlight layers in the narrative background. There has been a devastating death, the circumstances a present-day replay of Shakespeare’s classic doomed romance.

The synchronous plot is contrived. But Alex Thompson and his co-director and screenwriter Kerry O’Sullivan are such natural storytellers, their second joint feature following their award-winning Saint Frances (2019) succeeds in being intimate.

It is also very much authentic because Dan, Sharon and Daisy are a real family: The Kupferer-Mallens are stage veterans of Chicago, where the story is set.

And what sprightly support they get from the amateur troupe of misfits with their creative conflicts, notably Pinay actress Dolly de Leon (Triangle Of Sadness, 2022) as a bossy Broadway has-been.

Iambic pentameter doth not beseem Dan. He is nonetheless intrigued by their project and starts slipping away so regularly for rehearsals, Sharon suspects he is having an affair.

He discovers kinship and purpose. It is hugely moving, watching the broken, inarticulate man process his tragedy by performing in one.

Hot take: This fine-grained study of grief and art’s restorative power had the 2024 Sundance Film Festival weeping and laughing.