Honeyjoon Review (Tribeca): Study in Contradictions
In her debut feature HONEYJOON, writer and director Lilian T. Mehrel shares about a mother-daughter trip that explores grief and human contradiction.
Can you go on a sexy vacation with your mom so that you can scatter your father's ashes? That's the question writer and director Lilian T. Mehrel asks in her film Honeyjoon, which premiered at Tribeca. While it's hard to say if she arrives at a definitive yes or no answer to that, the journey is certainly worth taking.
June (Ayden Mayeri) and her mother Lela (Amira Casar) are visiting the Azores in Portugal, a place that June's father had fond memories of visiting. The two women are there to scatter his ashes and grieve his death. June wants to use this time to try to inject some life into her romantic situation, choosing clothes that accentuate her form and flirting with the men that she meets. Lela, on the other hand, spends her time doom-scrolling posts about the Woman Life Freedom movement in Iran and policing the clothes that June chooses. June books a private tour of the Azores with the handsome João (José Condessa). As the women spend time with João, they both discover that what they think they need from this trip is different from what they actually need, and that realization draws them together in unexpected ways.
Honeyjoon is a lovely film that manages to tell a mother-daughter story that has tension, but not animus. Often, movies like this pit the mother and daughter against one another in a way that can feel manufactured, but the frustrations that they feel in this film are all very relatable. There is a lived-in quality to these characters that allows them to feel fleshed out before we get too far into their story. There is a disconnect at times, but that feels more a product of age and upbringing than a problem they have with each other.
The performances in Honeyjoon bring the script to life. We care about the catharsis that June and Lela need because Mayeri and Casar make us care. These two women allow these characters to feel like people we know, or if we don't know them, the kind of people we want to know. And while Condessa could be confined to the role of “hunky tour guide,” he is written and performed as someone with something to offer both of the women in different ways. His inclusion in this film certainly benefits the women, but he also exists as a character in his own right, which makes for a more compelling film.
Honeyjoon is also a study in contradictions. About the ways that we see the world, but how we apply those observations to our own lives. About the things that we think we need compared with what we actually need. About wanting your own space, but wanting a parent close.
Sorting through complicated feelings like grief will often stir up other emotions as well, and more than anything, that is what Honeyjoon does well. It is a thoughtful look at how detrimental it can be to try to cut off parts of ourselves to avoid discomfort, but also about how healing it can be when we allow ourselves to access all that it means to be human.
Rating: 4/5
Check out my interview with writer and director Lilian T. Mehrel.