Rights v wrongs
Every life is precious. Woody Harrelson’s scruffy, grief-stricken activist repeatedly utters those words in first-time writer-director Laura Chinn’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story in reference to issues around terminally-ill patients’ right to die.
Suncoast doesn’t follow its own advice. Chinn’s script shortchanges many of the characters who inhabit this sincere but emotionally manipulative drama-comedy.
It’s set against the backdrop of the real-life US case of Terri Schiavo, who languished in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years while her husband and parents took opposite sides about removing her feeding tube. The ensuing media frenzy is a source of irritation for brusque and bullish single mother Kristine (Laura Linney), whose son Max (Cree Kawa) is moving into the same Florida hospice as Schiavo to spend his final days battling terminal brain cancer.
“I’ve been the mom of a sick kid for so many years, I don’t know who I’m going to be when he’s gone,” Kristine sombrely confesses to a grief counsellor (Pam Dougherty).
But she’s forgetting she also has a 17-year-old daughter called Doris (Nico Parker), who desperately needs a mother as she combats shyness and solitude while trying to fit in at Clearwater Christian High
School. Doris is the fulcrum of Chinn’s picture and Parker captures the awkwardness and confusion of a teenage loner, who is left feeling like she has sacrificed her childhood to stand shoulder to shoulder with her imperious mother against her brother’s terrible illness.
Linney and Harrelson – whose character Paul is a protestor in favour of Schiavo’s right to die – are both terrific and expertly pluck heartstrings. But the emotional rawness of their performances is unfortunately not supported by the writing.
Tears flow heavily on screen in Suncoast’s imperfectly executed final act. Sadly, Chinn hasn’t laid the strong narrative foundations to warrant our pathos and sniffles in return.
Tears lflow heavily on screen in imperfectly executed final act