I have to admit I cried watching the trailer for our next Shuswap Film Society movie Nowhere Special.
“It’s 90 minutes of simultaneously warming your heart and breaking it,” wrote one reviewer.
Nowhere Special is a moving drama about an unimaginably difficult situation, one that Italian director Uberto Pasolini based on a newspaper article he came across about a single father who, before he died of cancer, spent his final months finding a foster family for his young son. He’s set it in Belfast, where John is a window cleaner, dying of brain cancer, whose ex walked out when his 4-year-old son Michael was a baby. John has no family but is a selflessly good parent who wants to give his beloved son the opportunities he never had. His quest is to find a new “perfect” two-parent family for Michael when John is gone, while trying to shield his son from the terrible reality of the situation.
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Visiting one prospective family after another, John desperately tallies up the character of the couples, the nature of their relationship and his gut instincts and feelings about them. How can he judge a family from a brief encounter? Does he know his own child well enough to choose the right parents for him? The decision seems to get harder, not easier, and John is overwhelmed, struggling to find the right answer to his impossible dilemma. He comes to accept the help of a young social worker, who opens him to situations he would never have considered.
Ultimately, John realizes the need to share the truth with his son and to follow his child’s instincts on the most important decision of their lives. The love between this father and son uplifts this story about approaching death and anger at the injustice of having to leave one’s child. It’s beautifully acted, understated, thoughtful and tender.
Nowhere Special shows at an earlier time, 4 p.m., on Saturday, Nov. 19 at the Classic.
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