Motorola Razr flip phones, Destiny’s Child posters on the wall and Pussycat Dolls blasting out of car radios; 2005 is in full swing for the 17 year old protagonist of Suncoast, Doris (Nico Parker). The young Doris, named after her deceased grandmother, is basically invisible to her peers and her mother Kristine (Laura Linney). Doris has the demeanor of a dormouse, too shy to engage with her smoking, drinking, and driving classmates, and her mother Kristine is blinkered to Doris’s life in favor of her slowly dying son Max (Cree Kawa). Max has a form of brain cancer and is admitted to Suncoast Hospice so he can die peacefully.
The obsessive Kristine, whom Linney plays as a Karen-archetype stuck in a spiral of grief, begins spending nights at the hospice. Taking this as a chance to finally have some independence away from her controlling mother, Doris invites a group of teens from her class to use her house as a central location to party. As she navigates this new found friendship group and the impending death of her brother, Doris must find a balance between that grief and her own autonomy against a mother who’s struggling to adjust.
While there’s nothing particularly new in the framework of the charming coming-of-age, writer-director Laura Chinn brings Suncoast together with the strength and confidence of someone highly engaged with the story. The deeply personal story never feels like it’s masquerading, or taking swings that it knows will elicit reactions. The tone and structure of the film is reminiscent of Dayton and Faris’s Little Miss Sunshine, a similar indie film where conflict happens in small bursts but never finds itself overwhelming the narrative for dramatic value.
This review was posted on February 5th 2024. Full Review linked below
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