‘Our Son’ Review: Luke Evans Is The Best Part Of Slow Divorce Drama [Tribeca]
Billy Porter (left) & Luke Evans in Our Son. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Our Son is the kind of movie that, as a whole, knows where it wants to start and where it wants to end but isn’t too sure of how it’s going to get there. After flip-flopping between genres, story arcs, and simply how it wants us to think of its characters, Our Son finally settles on the idea of being a family (and sometimes divorce) drama — one that, when handling the issue of the prominent divorce constantly goes back and forth on whose side it’s on, a tactic that somehow works in the end. The film follows Gabriel (Billy Porter) and Nicky (Luke Evans — 2017’s Gaston in the live-action Beauty and the Beast), two married men with an eight-year-old son, Owen (Christopher Woodley). When it becomes clear — after an affair — that Gabriel is unhappy in the marriage, he files for divorce, putting himself in a battle against Nicky for primary custody over their son — a battle that plays out as more of a moral fight between the two than one that’s purely focused on the dispute regarding Owen’s future.
Christopher Woodley (left) & Luke Evans in Our Son. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
It takes an extraordinarily long time for Our Son to find its rhythm, with the pace of the initial hour feeling longer than it is, while the other ~45 minutes fly by due to the fact that they know what they’re doing by then, with a stronger sense of narrative urgency. One of the larger problems of the film’s first hour is that it isn’t entirely sure how to characterize its leads. We’re supposed to like the man who is walking out on his family after having an affair, but then we spend very little time with his story as the film progresses, making him the natural antagonist, if there is one. That’s not to say that it villainizes Gabriel, but it doesn't make him out to be a saint. Porter’s performance in the role doesn’t aid this, as he can’t seem to create a sense of longing and unhappiness that the character requires. On the other hand, Luke Evans’ (mostly) restrained performance as Nicky, a man whose life is being upended, is one of the stronger ones of the year, conveying a sense of confusion and disappointment, finally understanding that, no matter what he does, it will never be enough.
At its core, Our Son is not a movie about divorce or argument but one about love and its transition. It takes two people and forces them out of their day-to-day, examining the inevitable fallout. We watch them go from a stationary routine to one in freefall, looking at the pain in this change and the loss of their marriage while hoping to find a light at the end of the tunnel. The film, shot more like a documentary than a traditional feature, benefits from creating an environment that makes us feel a part of the story — except for the few moments where the scripted nature of the dialogue and story becomes too heavy, forcing us to take a step back and re-examine these people in their entireties.
Billy Porter (left), Christopher Woodley, & Luke Evans in Our Son. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
While Our Son isn’t a particularly dull movie, there’s nothing about it that makes it stand out to any extent. There are a few moments — you’ll know them when you see them — that feel unnecessary, as if the filmmaker picked moments that he thought made sense for the film, but ultimately take away from the intimate nature that the story hopes to bring, as if it were inviting outsiders into this small bubble that it needs to maintain to keep the film’s stakes realistic and the characters’ motivations understandable. It’s just unfortunate that, through unrealistic dialogue and an overall lack of focus, Our Son fails to become anything more than forgettable. Too many ideas and themes are thrown around at the wrong time, and a lack of conventional realism in the third act takes away from the film’s better moments, even though there are few of them. Evans’ performance simply isn’t enough to elevate this melodramatic film to a level worth recognizing, but hey, at least it’s well-intentioned result isn’t as manipulative as The Son.
Our Son premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 10.
