Film

Simultaneously surreal and too real for comfort, this beguiling third feature by Azazel Jacobs—son of avant-garde master Ken Jacobs—begs a light autobiographical reading. For this story of arrested adolescence, the director cast his parents as versions of themselves and shot largely in the New York loft space where he was raised, albeit with a substantially different-looking actor (Boren) in the role of manchild Mikey. At the outset, Mikey extends his family visit, citing nonexistent flight issues. That seems innocuous enough—but the sense of urgency increases when Jacobs cuts to Mikey’s wife and baby waiting in a sterile Los Angeles apartment.

Back in his partitioned space, Mikey reconnects with his comic books and guitar (as his parents, separated only by a curtain, attempt to sleep). After a few days, he stops making excuses for staying. “Do you know what it’s like to watch your parents grow old?” Mikey asks his wife in one of their increasingly rare phone calls. Indeed, the parents seem less like full-fledged human beings than intransigent facts—Dad, playing with windup toys, and Mom (the Julie Hagerty–like Flo Jacobs) offering Mikey coffee or tea almost as a mantra. Whenever they ask if something’s wrong, the movie finds a way to elide his response. There’s a subtle, unnerving imbalance in the film’s design: The cozier Mikey gets at home, the more alarming his presence becomes.