TIFF 2021: The Other Tom
TIFF 2021Despite having its heart in the right place, The Other Tom suffers from an inarticulate, clunky voice in its storytelling. On the one hand, The Other Tom wants to be about ADHD and the emotional drain that the condition has on a family and how these kids get unfairly treated because they’re misunderstood. On the other hand, it’s trying to bring some sort of peace of mind to Tom’s tumultuous and unstable, mother – a struggling, single parent with close to no parenting skills.
A small character-driven, personal drama could be a decent platform to take on the confusion, distraction, and overall hardship of a school-aged child who can’t connect with the rigidity of a traditional school day. Similarly, single parents who do a good job – some of the real world’s greatest super heroes – deserve a decent telling of their struggles. There’s a poignancy in there somewhere, but The Other Tom doesn’t mine it out because it can’t quite articulate either struggle. Child actor Israel Rodriguez Bertorelli playing the titular Tom gives a workable performance, but when scenes drill down onto his condition, the script falls into to a weak “Don’t-Show” and “Tell”. Time after time, poor Tom gets into trouble at school, and time after time, the episodes are minimised by brief ineffective scenes or explained to us in hindsight by one-dimensionally nasty teachers and administrators who detail the classroom incident reports to the mom (Julia Chavez). We never really see a scene that illustrates this in an authentic way. These moments always culminate with mom Elena losing her cool and swearing at an authority, which pulls the narrative more clearly into the “problem parent” lane rather than the “problem child” lane.
Tom’s mom is a desperate mess. She’s every kind of terrible parent, short of abusive. However, the film pleads for compassion because she’s a victim of circumstance. Not much money, no support, low-intelligence, and worst of all, she probably suffers from various undiagnosed emotional and mental health issues herself. Her behaviours include leaving Tom home alone periodically to pick up dudes; she swears, smokes, and loses her temper in front of him regularly; and she’s forever using “parenting verbal” no-nos. Things like “You’re stupid,” “What’s the matter with you?” “Why can’t you be normal?” She’s an ongoing negligence risk to him by failing the most basic Parenting 101 lessons, like seatbelt use. But her love is evident, so at least blatant abuse is never on the film’s agenda. Misfortune abounds. It’s sad and atrocious enough that it could get into Lilya 4-Ever territory, if it had any sense of how to frame this journey, yet it’s constantly getting sidetracked by messages it believes in, but can’t quite formulate. The Other Tom briefly takes on the issue of the medical community’s tendency to over-medicate ADHD kids and the importance of taking Tom to see his father, all while she’s on the run from Child Protective Services.
Elena never gets help or peace of mind. She’s constantly either trying to make plans to help Tom, cussing at professionals whose job it is to help children, or running from ‘the system’. It’s a chaotic journey and as a story arc, it doesn’t work. If anything, the film lands in a spot that validates her being alone with no real help for herself or her son. It’s infuriating that the film neither offers a sliver of hope nor puts an exclamation mark on this slice of life to draw attention to the scope of this issue. The film ultimately lacks story and thus rests its thesis on the portrait of this hurt, unsupported single mom. This could potentially resonate but for the regrettably amateur performances on display. As mentioned, the production gets a compelling youth performance from Tom. However, Julia Chavez is unpolished. She looks right and has the proper tone when interacting with Israel Rodriguez Bertorelli, but as soon as she interacts with the adult actors playing teachers, nurses, doctors, counsellors, she loses her naturalism with clunky deliveries and overacted outrages. And honestly, the rest of the supporting cast struggle as well, feeling quite a bit like people in these jobs who were asked to act in a scene in a movie. All hope of this working as a serious slice-of-life experience dies there.
Laura Santullo and Rodrigo Plá’s (co-directors and co-writers) script features a lot of passion for the deficient emotional self-regulation. Both Elena and Tom suffer from it, but it’s all fused into overwritten melodrama, which tends to undermine its hope for community wellness. As it attacks over-medication, it does so with an air of superiority, yet never delivers credibility to the view. As the film seeks a bond between Tom and his father, we never see a reason to trust this logic. The Other Tom is regrettably scattered and, unfortunately, it becomes part of the problem that exists in addressing juvenile ADHD and struggling households. It parlays sympathy for these circumstances, but neither elicits real empathy nor offers solutions.