Thomas Wolfe had it all wrong: You can home again, but just be prepared for the past to bite you on the ass once you get there.
In this genial dramedy reminiscent of Zach Braff’s Garden State, but without the Gen-X navel-gazing, an emotionally disconnected New Yorker (Jamie Effros, sharing screenwriting credit with director Paul Riccio) returns to his hometown on Cape Cod to bury his late-blooming gay father and, in the process, resolve some long-standing (albeit vague-ish) daddy issues as he mends familial fences with the deceased’s grief-stricken and gloriously messy live-in boyfriend (Norbert Leo Butz, in a revelatory performance).
The denouement is predictably optimistic, involving a canoe and a box of ashes, but there are just enough authentic moments of one-on-one connections and provincial preciousness (can you name another film featuring drive-in movie clips from Francis Coppola’s Dementia 13?) in Give or Take to appreciate its unassuming generosity.
All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival presents aGLIFF 33: Prism streaming festival, Aug. 6-16. www.agliff.org/agliff-33.
This article appears in August 14 • 2020.
