THE STORY – Al is a devoted music therapist at a children’s hospital in Texas. Charlie is the rebellious teen patient assigned to work with her. When Charlie reveals a secret passion project and professional lines begin to blur, the two forge an unexpected bond that will teach them both how to live.
THE CAST – Samantha Smart, Gabriela Ochoa Perez, Gabe Fazio & Maria Peyramaure
THE TEAM – Libby Ewing (Director) & Samantha Smart (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 98 Minutes
A music therapist named Al (Samantha Smart) enters the room of a girl who, in all likelihood, is the eldest patient on her floor of the pediatric hospital she’s been living in for far too long. Charlie (Gabriela Ochoa Perez) is the kind of girl that most would be keen to dismiss as “rebellious” or “moody,” though a more apt descriptor is “pained.” A stone’s throw from age 18, her friends have gotten their driver’s licenses and spend their weekends attending high school football games and dancing in their backyards, the tunes so loud that the neighbors are itching to call in a noise complaint. Charlie should be there, too; instead, she’s all but bedbound, cancer coursing through her body like electricity in a live wire. Al wants to help, and music is the medicine she knows best. But Charlie wants a real cure, and that’s not something the “singing Disney princess” can provide; her expansive vinyl collection be damned.
In response to such characterization, Al does the only thing she knows how to do: She dresses up in a Dollar General Snow White costume – one that she borrowed from the store because it’s not stealing if you give it back one day later – in an effort to make her patient smile. She gets a little more than that, actually, as Charlie laughs, pokes a little more fun, and accepts Al’s determination as a sign of genuine care. Thus, the duo begins to forge a unique bond that is undoubtedly stronger than those Al shares with any of her other kiddos, but one that can hardly be extinguished with a warning from the top nor the understood fact that Charlie has as much of a chance at survival as anyone else in her wing. There is a chance, but with it comes the possibility of heartbreak, which Al has already had her fair share of.
So goes the framework of Libby Ewing’s “Charliebird,” a frequently funny drama about finding connection in a place where relationships beyond that of a physician and patient are meant to be kept at a distance. Yet it’s hardly the saccharine sort you’re imagining. It’s designed to move you, but profoundly and devastatingly so, and not in the cheap fashion that films made in this mold tend to default toward. It deploys music as a device that can connect two souls, but not in the sense that it requires hand-holding and songs like “Stand By Me” or “Let It Be.” Rather, the music Al plays for Charlie (and others) represents a pathway to freedom, albeit brief, from the confines of their hospital beds and into a world of dance, release, and movement altogether, when the time comes for parents to say goodbye to their ailing children, their long fight having been lost though never in vain, Al and a fellow music-focused colleague sit in and perform a favorite song of the dearly departed, done in an effort to send them off in a peaceful, healing manner.
Ewing’s directorial debut – written by Smart, a first-time screenwriter in addition to being its star – is a deeply human film that is sure to make you weep while also managing to inspire a gamut of introspection that ranges from one’s concept of a life well lived and an appreciation for those who make the suffering more comfortable as their days fade away. That it achieves such revelatory emotional resonance is not in spite of but credit to its crew’s willingness to strip the proceedings of well-worn Hollywood dramatics that would handicap a similar film despite playing things safe. “Charliebird” is displayed in a 4:3-esque aspect ratio – its width is a touch slimmer, something cinematographer Luca Del Puppo achieved by rotating an anamorphic lens 90 degrees – a strategy that offers a disciplined, concerted focus on the things we’re meant to see, and nothing more. Del Puppo sometimes lingers on Charlie’s face, placing the proverbial spotlight on her latest makeup designs, which often feature gemstones and painted-on flowers. In other shots, we see the malaise of Al’s day when she’s not spending time with Charlie, static rooms only populated by the itch to return to her new friend no matter the complications their relationship may bring should things go wrong.
And they do, somewhat predictably, sending Al down a spiral that threatens both her work and her connection to Charlie. An extended scene that centers on a drunken, sorrowful Al feels alarmingly on the nose for a film that had otherwise steered clear of contrived beats; so, too, does the film’s sharp turn in its final third, an inevitable development that could have been executed more effectively. But Ewing and Smart, who turn in a dynamic performance and wrote a stunning, poignant script, never shy away from their story’s authenticity, nor the fact that they’ve created recognizable characters with whom audiences can easily empathize and understand. For some, the aforementioned trope-laden scene may feel like a natural opportunity to balk at what the rest of “Charliebird” has to say about grief and fellowship. Still, those viewers would like to be the sort that is pessimistic to a fault and thus unable to see how wholly compassionate and soul-bearing the film they’re witnessing is at its core.
Much of that is thanks to the chemistry between Smart and Ochoa Perez, a newcomer whose innate charisma teases a pure talent much further along than her other 25-year-old contemporaries. But that same praise is owed to the rest of the ensemble (especially Gabe Fazio and Maria Peyramaure as Charlie’s parents and Shakirat Alliu as Ava, Al’s coworker) for naturally filling out a drama that, while watching it, feels more like peering through a window into a familiar environment. Not all of us have experience in medicine or therapeutic services, but we’ve all been on the receiving end of some form of care in our lives, and “Charliebird,” more than any film in recent memory, acknowledges and understands the value of feeling seen by your provider, even if it’s “just” through music. Above all, it recognizes that there’s no such thing as “just” music; there’s a feeling that comes over you as the melody plays, transports you somewhere else, and frees you from the life with which you’ve become accustomed to. “Charliebird” has the same impact. It’s one of the year’s most affecting films because of it.
