Directed by Jonathan Caouette / 2012 / 90 mins.
Miami Beach Cinematheque. From December 15 through 19, 2012.
Walk Away Renée is the follow-up to Jonathan Caouette’s festival hit Tarnation, which won the National Society of Film Critics Best Documentary and topped many top 10 lists in 2003. In the conclusion to the original film, which covered an earlier part of his life, Caouette embarks on a road trip to move his mentally ill mother Renée across the country. As they encounter roadblocks in the present, we begin to flash back to moments from the past, giving us insight into this anything-but-ordinary mother/son relationship. Through musical montage, psychedelic sequences and real and imagined circumstance, Walk Away Renée raises questions about love, sacrifice, and the reality in which we live.
“Jonathan Caouette’s Walk Away Renée deals with the care of the mentally ill on an incredibly personal level. As with his 2004 documentary Tarnation, Walk Away Renée is a documentary of Caouette’s life; but this time he focuses more on his present relationship with his mother, Renée… Walk Away Renée says that if Caouette can do this for a woman that he never really had a loving relationship with, why can’t we act similarly towards our own loved ones? Why are we not more involved in their medication and treatment? … No matter what you think about the perspective in which Caouette films his mother and himself, it is difficult to deny the power of Walk Away Renée’s message about the health care industry and our society.” – Don Simpson, Smells Like Screen Spirit.
Miami Beach Cinematheque
1130 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139
305.673.4567
www.mbcinema.com
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