Proxy
2018 · 10m · USA
Directed by Eric Schuman
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
At a roadside motel run by his parents, Russ strikes up a hidden friendship with Beverly, a sick girl staying there with her mother to see a specialist — until adult intervention complicates everything.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Sick-kid coming-of-age is a well-trodden trap, but the roadside-motel staging suggests this one isn't going to play the disease-of-the-week card. Curious enough to bet on it.
Motel-as-hospital as a liminal childhood-staging-ground is a beautiful structural choice — early-Reichardt hush meets Florida-Project intimacy. That's a real configuration.
Motel-as-hospital is a quietly devastating spatial conceit — roadside liminal space for childhood's first negotiation with illness. The Florida Project comparison is in reach but the foreboding mystery angle pulls it somewhere stranger.