At the Angelika Film Center this week, I went to see Fairyland, a 2023 coming-of-age drama written and directed by Andrew Durham, based on Alysia Abbott's memoir Fairyland: A Memoir of my Father. The film is about Alysia as a child (Nessa Dougherty) being raised by her widower father, Steve Abbott (Scoot McNairy), a writer and activist, after the death of her mother in a car accident in 1973 when Alysia was 5. Her dad, who is gay, move to San Francisco and live in a house with several others queer artists and writers, where her father can be more open with his sexuality and not feel closeted like before. When Alysia asks him why he only has boyfriends now and no girlfriends, he gives a simple pat answer of "Because your mother was the only girl I loved and I could never love another girl after her."
Alysia grows up in the house with revolving roommates, getting to know people like Paulette (Maria Bakalova), essentially the den mothers; Johnny (Ryan Thurston), a cisgender gay Black man who likes wearing women's clothes, and Eddie (Cody Fern), who casually dates Steve for awhile. Alysia is often left to her own independence by her father, much like a typical Gen-X latchkey kid, where he assumes that at 5 years old she can take the bus by herself and get home, or stay up late by herself at home while he's out at bars picking up guys to bring home. Steve isn't prepared to be a single dad, but didn't want to give up care of his child to his mother in-law Munca (Geena Davis) and feel like an absentee parent to a child who just lost her mother. So he raises his daughter with more freedom and independence to counter the repressive and punishment-based childhood he had as a closeted gay kid.
The film spans between 1973 and circa 1987, as Alysia grows up into an 80s punk teen (Emilia Jones), and keeps her dad's sexuality a secret from her friends, who are casually homophobic, as well in a culture where the AIDS crisis is robbing the gay community of its members, and Alysia feels resentful of her father's laissez-faire attitude towards her, wanting more structure and balance. She chooses to go to NYU to live far from her father, and even gets to study abroad in Paris and have a boyfriend, but when her father writes her with the news that he has contracted HIV and wants her to take care of him, she flies back home, feeling angry that her father now needs her to take care of him when he wasn't there for her, and cutting her studies and abroad trip short.
I liked how the film felt complicated, and that Steve was trying to balance having his young life as a gay writer and activist with his friends and community, while also trying to care for his daughter in the best way that he knew how. I liked how Alysia didn't hate her father, but resented having to raise herself and be more the parent than he was. I liked how the film depicted the time of 1970s and 1980s San Francisco, and shifts in the free acceptance of the gay community to the shunning and loneliness during the AIDS crisis. The film depicts activists who cared for young gay men with AIDS who didn't have family to support them, like when Steve and Alysia visit a friend of his who is in hospice, in a local house run by community members, not by formal medical staffs, who would treat AIDS as if it was contagious and stigmatize those who had it.
The film is a great depiction of love and resilience in the face of tragedy, and I liked the close bond between Steven and Alysia, working well with McNairy as Steven and both Dougherty and Jones as the younger and older versions of Alysia. It was nice seeing Geena Davis in a rare acting performance as Alysia's grandmother Munca, and Adam Lambert has a small supporting role as Steven's friend Charlie.
I felt emotionally touched by this film, and thought it was quite good.
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