SEDONA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! Two of the finest film actresses ever show us once again how it is done in the excellent generational drama Isle of Hope. The drama is written and directed by Damian Romay, who adapted the screenplay from an Argentine play by Oscar Martinez. Said actors are Mary Stuart Masterson and Diane Ladd, who play a mother and daughter with a contentious relationship.
Victoria (Mary Stuart Masterson) is a playwright and professor who hasn’t written anything in years. When taking her teenage daughter, Eleonor (Jessica Lynn Wallace), to the airport for a trip to Machu Picchu by herself, Victoria gets the news that her mother, actress Carmen Crawford (Diane Ladd), has had a stroke. Her brother William (Sam Robards) is concerned, but as a doctor, he is tied up with patients. It doesn’t help matters that he and Victoria are still recovering from the battle scars of being brought up by a famous movie star. So Victoria isn’t exactly thrilled that when Carmen wakes up from her stroke, she thinks it’s 15 years earlier. Carmen asks where Victoria’s ex-husband Andrew (Andrew McCarthy) is. This forces Victoria into the past, dredging up long-buried memories and resentments. Some things are pushed to the side for good reason.
There is a scene where Masterson sparks up a joint in her childhood room while rocking her old Walkman. This is a moment that so many Generation Xers can identify with. She describes her old bedroom as a museum of the 1980s. It is so appropriate that Masterson is the one in the scene as she is a Gen X icon. Her John Hughes character, Watts, the tomboy drummer from Some Kind of Wonderful, was the proto Riot Grrl that you knew, wanted to know, or wanted to be. Watts was also the closest we got to a queer Hughes character, which was crucial to many teens in the outcast caste back then. Romay’s screenplay gives Masterson one of the best showcases of how well she can pull off a leading role. The audience identifies with Victoria and then gets played like a piano. She projects bitterness as the blackest coffee ever poured, which resonates hard with those of us in our 50s.
“…Carmen wakes up from her stroke, she thinks it’s 15 years earlier.“
It is also good to see McCarthy again, as he can carry a cup of true brewed bitter himself. How did we all get so old? Don’t ask Ladd, as she once again shows us why she is a supernova amongst stars. She is as fierce as ever, with the fire she showed in Wild At Heart burning as hot as ever. No one can work the messed up mommy arena like her. Ladd is the champion gladiator supreme of matriarchal mayhem. It is to her credit that her performance here is both energetic and nuanced, which is remarkable.
What Isle of Hope is really about is something that happens to us all: growing up. Suddenly, we are dealing with a whole different set of problems now that we are our parent’s age and our parents are old (or gone). Carmen complains to her granddaughter that she can’t find a movie at the theater where someone isn’t wearing a cape. I love how the indie scene has movies about real subjects like these. Romay had made a movie set in the real world that shows just how rocky middle age can be.
The energy generated by Masterson and Ladd throughout Isle of Hope could rival that of the stoutest vortex in Sedona. Romay does make some sharp plot turns that slide into the melodrama lane a couple of times. However, this is exactly the kind of real-life movie without tights that so many people are craving right now.
"…exactly the kind of real life movie without tights that so many people are craving right now."
