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The Accompanist
Zach Woods’ The Accompanist begins with slow consideration. It shows an untenable situation between nine-year old Emily and her aging grandfather. In its world premiere in the “Spotlight Narrative” section at the 25th Tribeca Festival, Woods’ emotional film stars powerhouses Susan Sarandon as Sylvia and Everly Carganilla as Emily. From the moment Sarandon makes her entrance, her portrayal of the zany, loving and perceptive character anchors the film.
Carganilla and the other actors seamlessly align with her. Both Sarandon and Carganilla create an authentic, believable relationship in spite of Woods going off on a few fantastical scenes that needed to be tweaked to cohere with the tone and ethos of the family drama with its humorous undertones.
Grandpa Martin Molido (Kevyn Morrow in a superb performance) is increasingly unable to function because of memory loss. However, with no assistance from his deceased wife and daughter, he tries his best to take care of Emily. Understanding the situation, Emily assumes a parental role and makes sure her grandfather takes his medication. Essentially, she fills in the gaps in their increasingly stressful living arrangement. However, in a harrowing and painful turning-point scene, his dementia presents a danger to himself and Emily, and this panics and overwhelms them both.
Emily and Grandpa need saving
The deus ex machina arrives in the form of Aubrey Plaza, who expertly portrays Sarah, an inexperienced child welfare agent who screws up royally. Mishandling the situation and causing chaos, she kidnaps Emily, misreading Grandpa Molido’s actions, and escalates an emotional confrontation. The audience reacted loudly at this scene, annoyed at her belligerent tyranny. They gave a smattering of applause when later in the film Plaza’s Sarah profusely apologizes. Woods’ beautifully directed scene is so harrowing among Grandpa, Emily and Sarah that we feel Emily’s and Grandpa’s trauma.
After Sarah drops Emily off at foster parent Sylvia’s house to keep Emily safe for the night, we expect Emily to run away to try to gain control and return to her grandfather by any means possible. This sets up Sylvia’s challenge to win over Emily. She does this with empathy, understanding and humor amid the growing bonds in their relationship. Their dialogue and interactions are particularly heartfelt and bring relief to a tense situation.
Emotional involvement, then resistance
Ironically, in using humor and “witchy” playfulness to engage Emily, Sylvia falls into her own trap. Both are “people who really need people” who find each other. But for Sylvia the fear of loss (she buried a daughter who died from anorexia) stops her from imagining a permanent relationship with a surrogate granddaughter. Emily is the age of a daughter her own daughter might have given birth to had she conquered her anorexia. For any permanence to take place, Sylvia must exorcise her daughter’s ghostly hauntings. Unless she confronts and reconciles her guilt, pain and sorrow, she cannot commit to caring for another, especially one as endearing, intelligent and loving as Emily.
Loss, trauma, reconciliation
The characters experience trauma, loss, and heartbreak which must be reconciled before they can move on. The film reveals this in interesting ways, as they attempt to meld past to present. Emily takes off in a panic to escape feeling abandoned. She seeks comfort with her grandfather in the hospital. But when his dementia intensifies, she runs away to their now abandoned home in a wishful return to a past that has long disappeared.
Sylvia envisions her own daughter Nadia in pleasant moments of childhood and in scenes less integrated with their relationship and more with Nadia’s illness. The revelation of adult Nadia’s struggle with anorexia, symbolized by Emma Farnell-Watson’s dance scenes, magnificently conveys the hell and self-torment she went through and most probably put Sylvia through too. Sylvia’s trauma also manifests in haunting sounds that Emily can intuit, in a scene where Sylvia watches teen Nadia (Olivia Edward) struggle to improve her ballet performance, chided by teacher Oscar (John Rothman). Both Emily and Sylvia must confront their losses and accept the painful need to move into the future together and help each other heal.
Resounding direction
Woods’ direction of the realistic scenes of panic and fear strike the most resoundingly. When the characters feel and act cornered with no relief on the horizon, we identify with these universal human experiences that Woods, who co-wrote the film with Brandon Gardner, effectively creates.
It’s his venture into the surreal that falls flat, because of its generality. If he had pegged moments of bonding specific to the characters he so beautifully defined and whom the actors so finely portrayed (other than the flying sequence, which didn’t work for me though I understand the symbolism) the film might have soared even more than it does.
For his feature debut, Woods, known for his acting in The Office, centers this family drama around symbolic truths about relationships, love, letting go and the fearlessness needed to face the unknown around every corner of our lives. The knockout performances sing with hope and unexpected wonder. Little in this film is predictable, especially as the character relationships start to evolve into lasting bonds but then are halted as the characters’ inner obstacles emerge.
Tickets for The Accompanist are available at the Tribeca Festival website.
