Tribeca: “Dragonfly” is an Ode to People on the Fringes
How well do you know your neighbors? There was a time when you knew the people you shared a wall or a driveway or an alley with. Maybe there are still places in the world where this community exists, but in larger cities, isolation seems to trump everything else. Paul Andrew Williams’ Tribeca-premiering film, Dragonfly, asks the audience to look at two neighbors with seemingly nothing in common as they begin to forge a tentative relationship. Are your own preconceived notions about these two women making you brace for a shoe to drop? Or should we all be a little wary of our neighbors?
Elsie (Brenda Blethyn) and Colleen (Andrea Riseborough) are nextdoor neighbors in a small town in England. Both women live by themselves, puttering around, drowning in their loneliness. Elsie is in her 80s, and her only child, John (Jason Watkins), has long since moved away. He pays for nurses to come and check on her, but the best he can manage for himself is infrequent phone calls. Colleen is in her 30s, and her only source of companionship is her dog, Saber. Colleen notices that the nurses are skipping out on time spent with Elsie, so she offers to help out instead. What forms is a fragile, tentative friendship that has a massive obstacle coming its way, and neither party will be able to withstand the fallout.
courtesy of Tribeca
“Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.” The quote comes from James Thurber’s The 13 Clocks and serves as the opening for Dragonfly. Once the final credits roll, your mind should wander back to these words. It’s a tragedy to both live too short a time and too long a time.
Elsie craves some sort of meaningful connection, but her son wants nothing to do with her. Sure, he makes sure there’s a roof over her head and food in the fridge, but that doesn’t compare to human interaction. Especially the specific type of relationship that exists between a parent and their child. Now that Elsie is “of a certain age,” he’s quick to get off the phone and can’t ever seem to find the time for a visit. Elsie is a woman on the fringe of society, much like her younger neighbor.
Colleen grew up as a ward of the state, and the only reason she has a house to live in, she says, is thanks to government assistance. She doesn’t lust over new technology or fancy clothes. She has her dog and that’s enough until she sees that Elsie isn’t getting the care John has paid for. It makes her spring into action, breaking down the barrier and allowing a friendship to blossom. Their growing relationship is the heart of Dragonfly, but it’s in Williams’ complex script that the film’s meatiness emerges.
courtesy of Tribeca
Dragonfly presents its audience with two women. It shows the viewer the homes of these women, how they spend their days, what they eat, how they sleep. As the friendship begins to grow legs, the film then presents a series of open-ended moments that force the viewer to fill in the blanks. Dragonfly isn’t open-ended or purposefully leaving out information, but it’s instead forcing the viewer’s hand and allowing their judgments of these women to color how their actions come across. It’s quite a masterful act that Williams is balancing, one that becomes so much more impressive when it all comes crashing down.
Social care, both elder and youth care, is a hot-button issue that will affect all of us one day. It’s something no one wants to think about, but we all still want the problem to somehow be solved in a way that’s beneficial for everyone involved. The easiest answers people seem to have accepted are nursing homes and children’s homes, but the only people who really benefit are those who are sticking their heads in the sand to avoid solving the deeper social issue. Dragonfly doesn’t have an answer to this crisis, but it does show an extreme of what happens when we try to fix problems by ignoring the reality of the situation.
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