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Kate Winslet Says She Knows 'At Least 4' Actors Who Won't Come Out In Case They're Shamed

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REVIEW by RogerEbert.com

Sundance 2023: Fairyland, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Magazine Dreams


One of my biggest surprises in the decade I’ve been covering this fest has to be Andrew Durham’s “Fairyland.” Not only was it stuck with a 9am premiere on a business day—not usually a great sign of quality—but it’s of a genre of drama that usually doesn’t work for me. Memoirs that are effective on the page often lose their emotional impact when translated to the screen, usually because filmmakers destroy all the personal touches in an effort to make something more broadly accessible. Durham never does this. The debut director, who was given the book on which this is based by producer and friend Sofia Coppola years ago, finds the right balance between personal touch and giving space to tell someone else’s story. It’s a film that’s rewardingly rich in detail, and it’s the specificity of it that gives it so much of its emotional heft because we have to believe characters exist in the real world before we care what happens to them. We undeniably do here in a film that I suspect will move many people who lived through this dark chapter in history.

“Fairyland,” based on the memoir by Alysia Abbott, opens in the ‘70s with the death of Alysia’s mother, killed in a car accident. It completely throws Alysia’s father Steve (Scoot McNairy) for a loop, and he decides to move across the country with his young child, becoming a part of a Haight-Ashbury commune run by an outgoing character played by Maria Bakalova. It’s here that Alysia realizes that her dad is gay as he first falls for one of the guys who crashes on the commune couch (played by Cody Fern) and then later dates openly in the San Francisco scene (including a long relationship with a guy played by Adam Lambert). While Alysia’s grandmother (Geena Davis) questions Scott’s ability to raise his daughter, he imbues her with a creative spirit, pushes her independence to a level that will allow her to standout later in life, and generally does the best he can in his situation. He uses the phrase “noble failures” late in the movie, and I think that’s a beautiful way to describe a parent who may stumble even as he’s trying his best.

As the film transitions to the ‘80s, Emilia Jones (“CODA”) steps into the role of Alysia, and she proves that her work in the first Sundance Best Picture winner was no fluke. She captures a young woman trying to find herself with a father she struggles to understand. While dad is pushing progressive ideas and how to express creativity—he’s a poet and author—Alysia sometimes just wants to be a normal teenager. Jones gives a really delicate performance, refusing to lean into any of the tropes of the troubled teen. She appears right when the movie could go into melodrama, and she does the opposite by grounding it.

Of course, any movie with a first half set in the gay scene in the ‘70s in San Francisco has the eventuality of AIDS in its narrative, but this is handled movingly and delicately as well. Alysia notices the obituaries are full of too many young faces, and everything shifts when she meets a 23-year-old friend of her dad who is in hospice. The incredibly talented and underrated star of “Halt and Catch Fire,” McNairy does the best film work of his career in this half of the film, conveying what AIDS did to so many passionate, creative souls, and how this man was able to pass his creativity down to his daughter even surrounded by so much pain. It’s a powerful piece of work all around.


www.rogerebert.com/festivals/sundance-2023-fairyland-still-a-michael-j-fox-movie-magazine-dreams