Whilst C’mon C’mon is the type of film that ultimately holds you down to listen to what it has to say, Mike Mills constructs it in such a way that it’s a more emotional and gradual experience. There’s a texture in the way he presents his narrative, culminating in a manner that when stepped away from and absorbed becomes even more effective.
The director’s most stripped-back effort to date, and his first since 2016’s 20th Century Women, the film centres on the relationship and eventual impromptu road trip between Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix), a radio journalist, and his newphew, Jesse (Woody Norman), a precocious – but not annoyingly so – young tyke whose somewhat thrust upon the unsuspecting Johnny when his mother, Viv (Gaby Hoffman), has to tend to the mental instability her volatile husband (Scoot McNairy) is currently battling.
The usually neon-soaked setting of California and the vibrancy of New York City are traded in for a black-and-white aesthetic that introduces a muted melancholic temperament to their story, an intelligent additive that helps the audience settle in and soak up the story Mills has to tell. It helps get to the heart of C’mon C’mon, a film about truly taking the time to listen to what other people have to say.
Johnny’s profession as a journalist, travelling from state to state interviewing young children in order to understand their hopes and fears, is thankfully never presented as anything other than earnest. And it’s through his profession that he learns to understand the endearingly odd Jesse and deepen his relationship with Viv, something that was skewered and exists with an underlying resentment following the death of their mother.
Almost voyeuristic in the way the audience are allowed to overhear these deeply personal and organic conversations, C’mon C’mon is an immersive drama that succeeds off the back of its three central performances – the ruffled Phoenix, the fierce Hoffman, and the superb Norman – and its innate ability to draw its audience in without the assistance of gaudy flash.
FOUR AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
C’mon C’mon is screening in Australian theatres now.
