A tale of disability, abuse, expectations and family secrets, “She Looks Like Me” from director Torquil Jones has a headstart on most documentaries, given its subject matter’s winding twists and turns. Some key details end up obscured — there’s enough real-life material here to fill an entire miniseries — but the film has an alluring atmosphere, and is rife with enough intimate re-enactments, to be occasionally absorbing.
Dreamlike hymns echo off the walls of an ornate church in the movie’s opening scenes. These have little thematic bearing on the story, but they make for a vibrant aesthetic, appearing and reappearing during moments of quiet reflection. A now-adult Jen Bricker — a woman born without legs — narrates the broad strokes of her childhood, from her adoption in rural Illinois, to the way her parents and three older brothers raised her to believe she could do anything she wanted. Old photos and...
Dreamlike hymns echo off the walls of an ornate church in the movie’s opening scenes. These have little thematic bearing on the story, but they make for a vibrant aesthetic, appearing and reappearing during moments of quiet reflection. A now-adult Jen Bricker — a woman born without legs — narrates the broad strokes of her childhood, from her adoption in rural Illinois, to the way her parents and three older brothers raised her to believe she could do anything she wanted. Old photos and...
- 3/18/2024
- by Siddhant Adlakha
- Variety Film + TV
Born without legs in October 1987 and immediately abandoned at the hospital by her biological parents, Jen Bricker was adopted by a small-town Illinois couple — who already had three boys — and raised to believe she could do anything she put her mind to. Her parents, Gerald and Sharon, gently encouraged their daughter to remove the word “can’t” from her vocabulary, and so Bricker never thought twice about playing with or competing against the other kids at her school.
She excelled across a variety of different sports, but her greatest passion was reserved for gymnastics. Obsessed from the moment she first saw future gold medalist Dominique Moceanu perform one of her floor routines on TV, Bricker devoted herself to becoming a brilliant power tumbler, and when she was 11 she placed fourth in the Aau Junior Olympic Games despite being the only disabled athlete in competition.
Based on that remarkable saga of persistence and possibility,...
She excelled across a variety of different sports, but her greatest passion was reserved for gymnastics. Obsessed from the moment she first saw future gold medalist Dominique Moceanu perform one of her floor routines on TV, Bricker devoted herself to becoming a brilliant power tumbler, and when she was 11 she placed fourth in the Aau Junior Olympic Games despite being the only disabled athlete in competition.
Based on that remarkable saga of persistence and possibility,...
- 3/13/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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