I’d be hard-pressed to find better untiers across generations like sadness, heartbreak, and fork-in-the-road epiphanies. ‘Suze,’ a comedic drama by co-directors and co-writers Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart, takes a couple of familiar themes and shakes them up with an unlikely pairing of a divorced middle-aged woman and her daughter’s eccentric ex-boyfriend. No, it’s not like they get together or anything. But as it turns out, the most unlikely person in our lives could help us find a way to reach parts of our personalities we had either buried deep down inside or forgotten. Sweetness and sincerity run through the film, and it all feels delightfully genuine.
The film begins on the worst day of Susan’s (Michaela Watkins) life (well, up until that point): when she comes home and discovers her husband Alan (Sandy Jobin-Bevans). Fast-forward five years later, Susan seems to be moving on okay. She has grown attached to her daughter Brooke (Sara Waisglass), who will soon graduate high school. Brooke has a boyfriend named Gage (Charlie Gillespie), who slightly annoys her mom due to a lack of overall boundaries and a nickname he ordains her, “Suze.” Boy, she hates that nickname. Susan has Brooke’s post-high school life all planned out. Her daughter will live at home and go to a local college. However, there’s a piece of information Susan doesn’t know (this is a recurrence throughout the film). Brooke told her dad she was going to college in Canada.
Michaela Watkins and Charlie Gillespie in ‘Suze’ / Photo courtesy of Wilding Pictures)
All of a sudden, Susan’s life flashes before her eyes as a peri-menopausal middle-aged woman who has settled into a long-tenured management position and wants more for her life. With the realization that she’s going to be an empty nester, it brings up some complicated emotions. Susan might be a tad co-dependant, but she’s been through a lot. Now, she has to deal with the prospect of her daughter searching for independence outside her peripheral. There’s an added wrinkle in all of this, however. Gage gets left behind in Brooke’s rather self-centered pursuit of freedom when she breaks up with him while at college. It may have been in motion already, considering Susan didn’t feel Gage was good for Brooke to begin with. He’s a little slacker, even with all his sincerity and gleefulness.
You have two characters discarded by the same person — and an unexpected injury causes them to be in the same space for two weeks. They would find commonalities through osmosis, and ‘Suze’ is aware of this. Both Susan and Gage have lessons to learn, and for the most part, they do. It’s in the way Watkins and Gillespie play these characters and show the layers they have where the film shines. Initially, Gage is an annoyance for Susan. In his youthful exuberance, his presence starts to bring Susan out of the shell she’s been living in. Susan gives Gage “the pat on the back” encouragement he craves. Clark and Stewart could have left these character arcs in place, which would have turned into a serviceable film.
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Looks can be deceiving. At one turn, Gillespie plays a fun, albeit aloof teenager. Come to find out, there’s a deep-rooted sadness within Gage. He feels the world won’t see him for the totality of who he is. Watkins is the loud voice that makes Gillespie’s character seen and heard. But Susan has her complex battles to deal with. ‘Suze’ has a running gag where Susan will see Alan and his golf instructor lover Jacinta (Sorika Wolf) speedrunning through life markers together. Somehow, along the way, they know exactly what’s going on with Brooke, much to her mother’s chagrin. The film deals with picking up the pieces of your life while being surrounded by people who broke them in the first place.
It’s messy, it’s not always neat, but there’s room for new revelations. ‘Suze’ just so happens to put a pseudo mother-son duo at the center of it. This is not all to say there won’t be parts of the film you won’t recognize from others of its mold. The delight comes from Clark and Stewart knowing when to subvert expectations slightly. The film doesn’t find a soft landing because life is complicated like that. But it’s nice to know you’ll find people to ride the turbulence out with along the way.
