I come from a family of fighters. We were not quiet and passive aggressive, we felt big feelings and we yelled at each other about them. We understood that our big feelings came from big love most of all, so we did not hold back, often finding words that cut swift and deep. The cruelest things I ever said to my mom were full-bodied wishes that our family was different, that she was different. I would spend days at my friends’ houses, sleeping in their beds, eating their food, confessing my secrets to their parents. I never told my mom about my first boyfriend, or my first kiss, or the first time I kissed a girl. I never asked her about sex, and instead asked a neighbor’s mom for advice the first time my period was a few days late. I kept my biggest goals and dreams close inside my chest, not trusting my mom with those either.
It wasn’t that my mom was a “bad” mom, or that she wasn’t capable of handling the feelings of a teenage girl. But I would see other families who kept their fighting behind closed doors, whose maternal figures stayed home and created a warm environment and made snacks after school. I witnessed my friends’ moms be so excited to have daughters, to take them to dance classes and do their hair, to lay in bed together and whisper secrets to each other. And I yearned for all of that, holding these supposed ideals against my own mother, holding her to a measuring stick entirely separate from who she was and what our circumstances were.
As Mouse shows us, these are not entirely unique experiences. But they’re also not the kinds of things people tend to admit out loud. It’s one thing to say “my mom and I fought a lot in high school.” It’s another to get into the specific cruel words that were sent back and forth. Mothers and daughters have a unique ability to hurt each other, their brains tuned to frequencies they know will cut the deepest. While this isn’t the first movie to explore this dynamic, it’s the first I can recall that explores it through this particular lens.
The film centers around two mother-daughter duos; Minnie, played by Katherine Mallen Kupferer, and her mother Barbara (Tara Mallen, Mallen Kupferer’s real-life mother), and Callie (Chloe Coleman) and her mother Helen (Sophie Okonedo). Minnie’s dynamic with her mother is revealed as her relationship with her best friend’s mother Helen deepens. Minnie, in the kind of selfishness that only teenagers are capable of, ignores Helen’s grief in favor of her own, demanding comfort and love. Helen, who loves being a mom more than anything else, is willing to provide such comfort, to a point. As their relationship deepens, it becomes clear that Minnie is insecure about her family’s circumstances; they have less money than Callie’s family, Barbara is the sole provider and can’t stay home with Minnie, they can’t afford a car for Minnie, and their house is smaller than Callie’s house. Minnie doesn’t lean on her mom as she’s grieving, and she also struggles to open up to her mom as she’s experiencing her first crush and relationship (and exploring her own queerness, which is beautifully portrayed in the film). The film focuses not just on Minnie’s actions, but also on Barbara’s reactions to them, often holding on Barbara’s face as Minnie lobs insults at her or as she overhears her daughter flirting with her crush, realizing that she’s not privy to these important moments in her daughter’s life.
These women all hurt each other as they are trying to navigate this new world without Callie. Mouse reminds us that we only know people in specific circumstances and contexts, and in some instances, we only exist in the context of who we are to someone else, even those we love the most. Both Helen and Minnie are forced to recontextualize who they are without this other person they loved so much—Minnie learning who she is without just being “Callie’s best friend” and Helen learning who she is beyond “Callie’s mom.” Both Minnie and Helen orbited around Callie like satellites, Callie pulling them to her with her enormous gravity and light. But they both only knew her in those specific contexts. Along the way, they both learn more about who Callie was to everyone else, a small gift bestowed in the depths of their grief. The movie poignantly points out that different types of grief are not equal, but they’re all real.
Chicago’s very own directing duo Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan (Ghostlight) expertly capture the reality of these people and this situation. O’Sullivan’s script delivers a fully-realized portrait of grief set against a coming-of-age backdrop. All together, the effect is haunting and healing all in one. The characters and the environment feel entirely real—we’ve all met people just like them, we’ve all sat in kitchens and living rooms and teenage bedrooms that feel like these, and we’ve all felt some form of the feelings that they’re feeling. And we know exactly how they’re all feeling because of the skillful acting on the screen. Mallen Kupferer is phenomenal in her quietly confident portrayal of Minnie, perfectly capturing adolescent insecurity and this profound grief. Okonedo similarly shines as Helen, often saying so much with just her face, without ever slipping into melodrama.
Thompson and O’Sullivan have crafted something tender, teeming with humanity, and deeply impressive. They took what could be such a simple story and instead expanded it into a web of relationships, building a universe around this missing life, and sustaining some of the most nuanced mother/daughter dynamics I’ve ever seen on screen. We can’t change how we behaved as teenagers. We can’t change who our parents are. And we can’t change the bad things we’ve experienced. As the movie reminds us, “there is no moving on, there is only living forward.” How lucky we are to have art to aid us in living forward, in grief and in our complicated relationships. Mouse has wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket, reminding me that I’m not alone in these feelings and these experiences, and reminding me how wonderful it is to be human, even when it’s hard and even when we’re imperfect.
