And it lands in a place that feels true and even moving. It’s a film that’s understandably almost in awe of what women have to go through to make another human being. We’ve seen so many films that put motherhood on a pedestal, and no one is suggesting it shouldn’t be, but “Babes” is more effective in conveying the beauty and joy of it because it also mines its ugliness and pain for big laughs.
There’s also a lot of pain in Kyle Hausmann-Stokes’ “My Dead Friend Zoe,” but it too is foundationally about the importance of friendship. A deeply personal film that comes from Hausmann-Stokes’ own experience as a vet, this is a powerful drama with a phenomenal performance at its core and another reminder that Ed Harris is one of our best living actors in its supporting cast. Ultimately, it’s telling two stories of memory: A man who is increasingly struggling to remember and a woman who wishes she could forget.
Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green of “The Walking Dead”) served as an Army mechanic for eight years, and she’s introduced under the weight of PTSD from her time in Afghanistan. She’s at a meeting run by Dr. Cole (Morgan Freeman), who refuses to sign her paperwork until she opens up. The problem is that Merit’s friend Zoe (Natalie Morales) keeps insisting that Merit stay quiet. Soldiers don’t share. Especially not about their feelings. The small problem is that Zoe is dead, appearing only to Merit throughout the film, sometimes as support but usually just as a reminder of how much Merit is stuck in the pain of losing someone so important to her. It’s an effective conceit that Hausmann-Stokes goes back to a few too many times, especially in the back half, but Morales is solid in a truly difficult role given she’s playing Merit’s mental/emotional version of a character more than full-blooded one.
Morales is always a welcome screen presence, but the movie belongs to Martin-Green, who navigates truly complex emotional waters. While managing her own trauma with a friend that no one else can see, she gets stuck managing her grandfather Dale (Harris), a stubborn Vietnam vet who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. As Merit begins a tentative relationship with the manager (Utkarsh Ambudkar) of a local assisted living facility, her emotional walls begin to crumble. This is a deceptively difficult role, one that could easily slide into melodrama, but Martin-Green grounds it, finding alternating beats of joy amidst the pain in a way that makes both more powerful. And then there’s Harris, an actor who always does so much with every single line. There’s a scene on a pontoon boat between the two leads that is one of the best I’ll see all year, an acting exercise of an incredibly high caliber.