A harrowing homecoming
Home Again
(out of 4) Starring Lyriq Bent, Tatyana Ali and Stephan James. Co-written and directed by Sudz Sutherland. 103 minutes. Opens Friday at Cineplex 401-Morningside and Yonge-Dundas. 14A The title is meant to be ironic, because there’s no way the three central characters of Home Again, who’ve been forcibly returned to Jamaica — a place they left as small children — feel any kinship or have any connection to the land of their birth.
Canadian writer/director Sudz Sutherland’s searing drama opens with a shocking preamble: from 1996 to 2001, three countries, Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., passed laws making it easier to deport, for even minor crimes, longtime residents who hadn’t obtained citizenship. The result: more than 34,000 people have since been deported to the Caribbean nation, more than seven times the island’s prison population.
Marva (Tatyana Ali) has left her two children behind in Canada after, to her enduring shame and regret, she’s duped by a smooth-talking boyfriend who turns out to be a drug smuggler.
While Dunston (Lyriq Bent) has done four years of hard time in a U.S. prison, Everton (Stephan James), a U.K. high school student, has been deported after being caught with a few joints.
All three find themselves strangers in a strange and unwelcoming land.
And while Marva and Everton delude themselves that their stay is temporary, Dunston sets out to buy a fake passport, though the price is far beyond his means.
While Dunston uses his brawn and hard-core rep to find employment as a guard/enforcer at a drug lab, the callow Everton plies a local girl with his charms to find temporary refuge. Marva milks goats, struggles in vain to fend off the advances of an uncle and finds prospects for employment bleak.
“No decent folk is going to hire any deportee,” she’s told flatly.
All three actors acquit themselves well, particularly Bent as Dunston, a soulful man trying to leave his violent past behind. Ali creates a sympathetic portrait of Marva, a woman close to breaking under the crushing weight of adversity. James’ portrayal of Everton is the opposite. He’s shallow and manipulative, particularly of his grief- and guilt-stricken mother, (played by the always wonderful CCH Pounder). His rapid descent is harrowingly believable.
The reggae-infused soundtrack is similarly used for ironic effect, its breezy, carefree tone a stark contrast to the hard-scrabble life faced by the three outcasts and the Jamaican people themselves. Sutherland is certain to earn enmity in some quarters for his portrayal of daily life in Jamaica, an island paradise for the garishly dressed tourists but a virtual prison for deportees. The majority of the people there are variously portrayed as sex-crazed, drug-addicted, prone to extreme violence or sanctimonious hypocrites. Sutherland’s film also raises a genuine issue: how could the parents of these deportees be so remiss in safeguarding their children’s future? No one is likely to thank Sutherland for that either.