maurice_yacowar Review of Medeas

Medeas (2013)

Dairy farmer and mute wife live silent, desperate existence

[7/10 · 12 January 2014]

Allude to Medea in your film title and you're promising high passion and a mystery meat pie — even if you don't specify the gender of the chef. Andrea Pallaoro provides none of that in Medeas. Instead a quiet, psychological drama is played out on a failing dairy farm in Southern California. But as Willy Loman demonstrated, even the simplest human lives can wear a tragic dignity. The classical register of the title corrects our initial sense that this film is about the taciturn farmer and his mute wife's communication problem. They have four boys, a blossoming teenage daughter and now word of another baby on the way. The oldest boy threatens the father's stern hold, especially when the mother is at risk. The father is characterised by his favourite game. He feigns sleep/death/drowning, then roars to loud play-threat life. When he intuits his wife's outside romance and his children growing away the threat turns real. Only his wife survives.