Rating: NR | Runtime: 94 minutes
Release Date: August 26th, 2021 (New Zealand) / February 24th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Transmission Film / Greenwich Entertainment
Director(s): Matthew J. Saville
Writer(s): Matthew J. Saville

Believe me, this is far more humiliating for me than it is for you.

There’s a sense while watching Juniper that the events on-screen aren’t merely a fiction of the filmmaker’s mind. The way in which the darkness and shame that can no longer linger below the surface comes through to expose the complexity of these complicated characters hints at a lived-in experience—one that doesn’t need exaggeration or saccharine subterfuge to make it make sense.

So, it’s no surprise to learn Matthew J. Saville drew most of what we see from his own life. His abrasive grandmother had a fall, breaking her femur and forcing her to come stay with them. And he lived in the so-called “suicide capital” of New Zealand, unfortunately knowing many people who tragically took their lives. But rather than judge or chastise, he honors their memories with a story that’s less about hope for the future than acceptance in the present.

Sam (George Ferrier) is our suicidal teen lead who’s barely hanging on at boarding school when he isn’t drunk. The reasons why will soon be revealed, but for now we simply watch him sulk and prepare for his late mother’s birthday to join her in oblivion. Except an unexpected wrinkle gets thrown into the mix.

His British father (Marton Csokas’ Robert) has agreed to let his own mother (Charlotte Rampling’s Ruth) stay with them to convalesce from a bad injury that has kept her stuck in a wheelchair in England. The two don’t talk. Sam has never even met her. It therefore appears to be one big messed up family stuck together to endure each other’s resentments as they continue to build the emotional walls that already separate them even higher. With a lot of gin and a desire to fight, they might shift the tide.

The result is a rather poignant and authentic film centering the psychological toll of difficult lives (relatively speaking, but no less potent than each other’s) rather than the goal to ease their pain. That exists too, but as a byproduct of their strength and willingness to deconstruct the games society so often demands we play in lieu of confronting the truth.

This is Ferrier and Rampling’s show, their rapport a powder keg of violent stubbornness that needs to be worked out to move beyond. Because ignoring it with silence only lets the fear driving their actions to fester. Saville says it best in his director’s statement: “An old woman is able to let go and die, and a young man deals with his grief, and lives.” They see redemption in each other. An avenue to right past wrongs if only in the sense that it may finally let them forgive themselves. It’s all any of us can hope to do.

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Marton Csokas, George Ferrier, Charlotte Rampling & Edith Poor in JUNIPER; courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.