Clementines
2019 · 19m
Directed by Laurie Barraclough
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Clem returns to her childhood home for her stepfather's funeral — and to confront what tore her apart from her old step-sister Clémentine as teenagers.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A funeral-homecoming dual-grief structure is sturdy enough, but Barraclough doesn't subvert the form—she honors it, which means this lives or dies on execution, not premise provocation, and that's not my fight.
The film's deliberate pacing and formal restraint position it squarely in the European art-house tradition of intimate family reckoning; Barraclough's compositional choices and the earned restraint of the sister dynamic deserve serious consideration.
Barraclough builds the entire emotional architecture on a single recurring gesture—the way Clem and Clémentine move around each other in shared space—and that micro-behavioral choice does the narrative work that dialogue won't touch.
Reviews
A gently paced film by Laurie Barraclough, who takes us through the delicate moments of rediscovering the past.
Initially the two actor/producers Isabella and Molly came to me and pitched some ideas inspired by, and set in, the amazing house they spent so much of their youth in, and that means so much to both of them.