User Reviews

"Low tide" is a 2012 film directed by the Italian director Roberto Minervini, about a few days in the life of a twelve-year-old Texan boy (performed by Daniel Blanchard) during the summer holidays which he spends in total solitude as his mother (performed by Melissa McKinney) works and when she doesn't work, she lives her separate life having fun with friends.

At first glance it may seem like a film without a coherent plot and without meaning, perhaps even a little boring. After all, it is a one and a half hour film in which the dialogues are limited to no more than 20/25 minutes in total (and perhaps I'm exaggerating by excess): not that I counted them, but the first word of the film occurs even after 8 minutes into the game and it's "Vernon?", when the boy knocks on a neighbor's door; the next word occurs 4 minutes later, and it is always the boy who, woken up in the night by deafening music coming from his mother's room, calls her before entering ("Mum?"). To have a first skimpy dialogue we have to wait until minute 17, when the boy tries to teach Vernon to play bouncing stones on the water.

Further strangeness, we don't even know the boy's name, although he is the main character of the film (in fact up until now I have called him "the boy" or "the main character"): no one calls him by name, not even his mother of whom we don'tknow her name as well. Even in the credits, we read "The boy" and "The mother". But we know the names of all the secondary characters. Oddily, isn't it?

It might appear to be a bizarre choice by an eccentric director: but if you try to get into his soul (the director also took care of the screenplay), you can sense that this is his precise stylistic choice aimed at better outlines the extreme loneliness in the life of this poor boy. I feel this director's choice as a clear homage to the so-called "Italian neorealist cinema".

Come back to the characters, as I said before, the mother is totally absent in her son's life: she is never at home during the day and very often even at night because she loves to have fun with her friends. And the rare times she comes home before her son goes to sleep, she barely speaks to him and just to ask him to bring her a beer or what there is to eat. She bites something and then she gets into bed.

It seems that this boy is to her a kind of bother presence that complicates her "social life", but which, at least, keeps her house in tidy. Not that the woman has much trouble bringing her current lover to her house doing all she want to do, regardless of her son who is in the next room. Moreover, often, she throws parties at her house with lots of alcohol, drugs, and whatever. Always with the son staying in his own room.

As said, the boy spends his days completely alone also because he has no friends. Occasionally he joins a strange neighbor, Vernon, with whom he goes around collecting empty cans to raise a few dollars with which to buy some food. In fact his mother rarely goes to buy food and when she does, she only buys canned one that is certainly not suited to the needs of a growing boy.

As you might have understood, the boy (I'd better invent a name for him: it's annoying to always call him "the boy") is certainly the core of this family, both because he earns by himself a few extra dollars, but above all because he does all the houseworks that should be the responsibility of his mother, who is messy and not at all attentive to household cleaning: the boy often changes the sheets, does the washing machine, he is a tidy and clean boy who always takes a shower or bath, altough we always see him wearing the same clothes: short dark trousers and a light blue sleeveless vest. Evidently they are the only items of clothing he owns.

The only times that mother and son spend some time together is when she occasionally make him helping in her job at a nursing home where she is a janitor. Not exactly what we could call "quality time with your son", I must say.

But despite all this mother's lacks, the son loves her and cares for her, as if he were the adult and not she. We clearly see that one evening, when the woman returns to her house over drunk: her son drags her into her room as best he can and puts her on the bed; then covers her with the sheet and lies down next to her, hugging her. The love of a son that many mothers would like to have.

One evening she decides to take her son to a fair in the city: the boy is excited and wears his best suit (actually, nothing other than a decent red shirt and long trousers). At the party, as usual, she lets herself courting by men while her son wanders around. Suddenly, the boy realizes that he has been left there alone. We see the boy desperate and angry for the first time: to get home he has to walk several miles late at night and alone and crossing dangerous roads.

The miles he walked must have been a lot, because the boy, having left the city in the middle of the night, arrives home when it is already daylight. Mom, obviously, isn't there. He washes himself because he is dirty and sweaty and then, as usual, he collects the dirty laundry (his mother's too) to put it in the washing machine.

But this time there is something different in him doing that usual housework: he appears almost absent, thoughtful; which is understandable, given the bad experience of the previous night and the tiredness. But is it just that? Or else?

When he grabs the liquid detergent to pour it into the washing machine, he looks at the bottle as if he had seen it for the first time. Or as if some ugly ideas had just popped into his head. Not even time to think about it and he takes a sip of detergent. The unpleasant taste and the irritating effect force him to spit it out before swallowing it. But evidently the boy is quite resolute in his decision to put an end to his very young life and, gathering all the courage he has, he takes another big sip of detergent, and this time he swallows it.

The poisonous effect of the detergent is immediate: the boy begins to cough loudly and continuously and staggers towards the hall where he gets down on all fours, then collapses to the ground motionless. We can't even imagine how desperate and hopeless the boy must have been to consciously carry out such an extreme and even physically painful act.

But, fortunately, someone loves this good and serious boy: we see him at the hospital fortunately alive after having got a gastric lavage. He is about to cry, apparently shameful for what he did, and not willing to hug his mother that takes him into her shoulder.

However, the final scene is a breath of hope that this boy's life, after the extreme act (fortunately failed), is going to change for better: his mother takes him to the seaside, the two of them alone. The boy enters the water and enjoys the coolness of the morning waves; his mum joins him and they start to play with the water, laughing as we never see them doing; then the two hug each other. For the very first time, the mother cuddle his son as if he were a toddler, with true love; the love that any mother should have for her child, especially if sweet and good like this one.

All nice and heart-breaking: was it really necessary the boy doing what he did, to give him all the love that he deserved?

I really don't know what this movie was. It seemed lacking in theme, plot, motivation, direction, intent, character development, motion, and artistic device. It's random events from a bored and neglected boy's life. The mother is absent and unavailable. The boy does the housework. while she works all day and parties all night. The most meaningful dialogue happens in a bingo game 45 minutes in. The most action happens when he accompanies her to work at a nursing home and they fold a sheet together. He eventually drinks some laundry detergent and ends up in the hospital. She finally pays attention to him by taking him for a beach outing and they hug. The end.

You don't even see a low tide, but something sure stinks like one. Actually no, I take that back. If it stunk, that would be something.