Keswick Film Club - Reviews - Blue Heron

One reviewer put like this: "Think of Blue Heron as a snow globe. Unhurried and nostalgic, Sophy Romvari's semi-autobiographical debut lets you observe the intricacies of its self-contained world as if through a glass dome."

That perfectly sums up the first 'act' of the film, where we follow the life of 8 year-old Sasha's family over one summer in the late 1990's. Despite being set in the great outdoors of Vancouver Island, the film has a claustrophobic feel, focussing as it does on the tight-knit family bubble.
Sasha's mother is tasked with keeping the children, Sasha, her two brothers and older, half-brother Jeremy occupied and entertained, whilst her father works at his computer at home. Romvari perfectly captures the ennui of the long holiday but overlying this is the increasing threat posed by Jeremy, who suffers from a severe self-destructive, nihilistic form of disorder. Her parents are unable to manage him and are seemingly failed again and again by the agencies supposedly there to help. Yet there is a connection between Sasha, evidenced by him giving her a keyring in the shape of a blue heron, that he stole during one of his kleptomaniac episodes. He is a profound influence on her life.

Fast forward 20 years and Sasha is a film maker, still with the blue heron keyring, trying to understand what went wrong and what could or more importantly, should have been done. Then in a cinematic twist, the Director places grown-up Sasha into the story as the social worker she saw visiting her parents back in that long summer. Even with the benefit of hindsight, there could be no satisfactory resolution.

One can understand Director's need tell this deeply personal story and the early narrative was powerfully raw. Somehow though, Sasha's investigations in her later life were less compelling.