[yasr_overall_rating]
Story of Izzy Klein, a young woman fresh out of college as she strikes up and ruins relationships with several men, and struggles to navigate the failures of post-college adulthood, leaning on her mother and older sister for support.
Izzy Klein (Madelyn Deutch, also writer) is a 20-something college graduate who seems lost inside her head and hesitant to leave the world of her wonderings that she writes in the book she always has with her. Her little sister, Sabrina (Zoey Deutch, also Madelyn’s actual sister) is the Type A who has her shit pulled together and is making it big as an actress in Hollywood. Sabrina and her television star, long-time boyfriend, Sebastian (Avan Jogia), drag Izzy home from New York and attempt to rescue her from the gutter of one superbly bad breakup through a string of hopeful, but ultimately disappointing men.
Meanwhile, mom and dad are in the background of the story. Dad is gone. It was a suicide and everyone knows this except Sabrina who was 15 years old at the time and adored him. In the years since, Mom (Lea Thompson, Madelyn and Zoey’s actual mom and the film’s director) has discovered a newfound happiness with a New Age lesbian, who is nearly the same age of her daughters.
The film is a sweet, thoughtful story on the imperfections of family, daughters and sisters and women, navigating their way through holding on and letting go, finding answers and finding questions. The storyline is a bit scattered and neurotic, not unlike the character of this film’s writer (Izzy, a.k.a. Madelyn Deutch). The point of the story? Is it about a young woman accepting who she is and being okay with being alone? Is it about sisters and family secrets? Is it about grief and the many ways we manifest our wounds through anger or distrust or self-neglect?
Possibly, this film is nothing more than a family project between Lea Thompson and her daughters. Maybe it’s just something they had on their bucket list and we get to enjoy their artistic explorations as a family. Either way, I thought the characters were relatable, loveable, and humorous. They are human, incongruent, fallible, and fumbling through love and life. The film is titled after Izzy’s run of spectacular men, but I think the subtle opposite is implied: that this is a year of spectacular women and their journeys together.
Regardless of the lack of focus, I found the movie enjoyable and worth watching, if only because sometimes life does ramble on and on with no grand purpose at the end. My favorite moment in the film is toward the end when Izzy has an epiphany about the answers she has been looking for. Laying on a dirty city sidewalk of “AIDS feet” and “dog wormies,” she looks up and is mesmerized by a branch of cherry blossoms that have finally struggled into the birth of yet another spring. There she finds the metaphor of her journey and also the answers that are never really there.
Maybe life really is like a branch of cherry blossoms. The sweet tender virgin pinkness of hope bursting forth from our own imperfect, barky, rough and stubborn selves. We try to break free from the roots and the heaviness of the trunk; we branch out and branch out and branch out, fighting to be free of the beauty that we neglect to see in ourselves. Maybe the truth is that we’re not always as tender and fresh and beautiful as the cherry blossoms in springtime, but we are always as strong and true and graceful as the core of ourselves which refuses to let us go.
To indulge in one last cliche metaphor, maybe Home is nothing more than the acceptance of where the Heart is.
Now playing in select theaters and on Video On Demand
