Review: Mouse

The gentle melodramas of Chicago-based filmmakers Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan don’t break your heart all at once—they do it steadily, incrementally, a death by a thousand cuts in small gestures of clumsy vulnerability. Their newest film, Mouse, is built on moments like this: Struggling single mom Barbara (Tara Mallen) comes home from work and puts a blanket over her daughter, Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), asleep on the living room floor. The leader of a grieving parent support group asks Helen (Sophie Okonedo) what her recently deceased child’s name is and, faced with a tearful silence, tells her it’s OK if she can’t say it right now, but he hopes she’ll come back and try saying it next week. There are very few explosive emotional breakthroughs or easy answers here. Instead, these hushed acts of compassion build and build to form the duo’s intimate miniportrait of grief and connection.

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