Exit Elena - Welcome to the Family

Review

Film: Exit Elena

Director: Nathan Silver

Country: USA

Nathan Silver's Exit Elena is an almost uncomfortably intimate portrait of family life. It was a surprise to find out afterwards that it is a semi-autobiographical piece as the characterisation is raw and honest.  Also a surprise was that only one of the cast was a 'professional' actor as all the performances are utterly believable.

He cleverly places us in a social grey area - Elena, played by Kia Davis, takes up residence in the family home as the carer for Florence, the elderly mother/ mother-in-law of the house's owners.  She's an employee, and sees herself as such, but as a resident should she be treated as family member and friend, with all the lack of privacy and autonomy that entails, or labelled employee and possibly not be made to feel at home?

Silver deliberately chose a camera format that gives the look of a home movie and uses documentary style techniques.  This is what leads to the viewer discomfort (in an effective rather than alienating way) as we are made to feel like we are intruding on the private.  This is not to say that what we are watching is particularly horrific or grotesque.  But we are watching people who's need to be needed causes them to go beyond the usual social boundaries.  

Silver must have an excellent relationship with his mother, as she plays an exaggerated version of herself.  It is a vanity free performance, the created character's desire to include Elena in the family leading to discomfort both on Elena and the viewer's part from the intrusive enthusiasm and manipulation with which she is welcomed. She is trying to be a surrogate mother figure where that role is not desired and is incredibly emotionally manipulative with Elena and her own family and can't read the signals that ask her to back off. And there is little more socially uncomfortable that watching continuous arguing and bickering between a couple that you don't know but are forced to spend time with and Elena is subjected to this again and again.

Elena herself, although the focus of the film, is an altogether more ambiguous character, forced to be evasive in the face of stifling attention. She clearly wants to feel included in something, some kind of family structure, but on her own terms and at her own pace. She doesn't have a map to navigate the situation she finds herself in and seems to find herself more and more lost and making the kinds of choices she probably never would have planned on doing.  It is never explained but there is definitely a sense that she is trying to replace some kind of emptiness in her life.  The ambiguity with which the character is played allows us to project our own unease onto her and also to project how we would react and feel in such a situation.

In many ways, Exit Elena is not much more than a carefully staged home movie but for me it was an interesting look at social boundaries and human emotional needs that was worthwhile viewing.