Short term 12
The main characters in Short
Term 12 are Grace and Mason (Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr.), a twentysomething couple that lives and work together in a foster care home for teens. It was written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Cretton based the film on his own experiences as a supervisor in a similar facility, which explains how, despite the fact that many in the audience will never have experienced such a facility, this terrific film nonetheless conveys as feeling of indisputable authenticity.
Like the supervisors, the scenes alternate between living within the community and hovering at its edges, preoccupied with its residents before and after hours. By day, Grace and Mason move among and around the atrisk youth. They conduct regular room checks wearing blue rubber gloves, brisk but carefully thorough examinations of the few personal possessions in the intimate, austere spaces of bedrooms made only slightly less clinical with makeshift, sometimes dark, personalized temporary decorations. They are just as firmly tender with the youth themselves, particularly Grace, who seldom has call to assert authority. Maintaining a calm, safe space and forging uneasy sort of friendship, to help the teens survive and possibly thrive, is the broader goal.
The couple’s relationship can’t help but be affected by what they experience every day. They doodle one another in their spare time and at work, just as Grace spends time drawing with a new young woman arrival who may have experienced abuse at the hands of her father. The repetition of these such parallels underlines how the minders, in their twenties, are not that far removed from the ages of their charges. And that they haven’t quite figured everything out, either. Far from it, although the foster home helps them grow up a bit, too.
Crettin’s script delivers warm, humorous dialogue and his direction a wealth of naturalistic performances, chief among them Larson’s understated, incandescent turn as Grace. The other stand-out is Marcus (Keith Stanfield), a tough shell of bravado covering his damaged, soul. Marcus is about to turn 18 and transition out of the facility and the scene where he expresses himself through a poignant, angry and wistful autobiographical rap is one of the most memorable scenes in a quiet but powerful film with many such moments to choose from. ≈∫Ω
Short Term 12 opens in Toronto on Nov. 15, 2013 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.