We Don’t Belong Here (2017)

Directed by: Peer Pedersen | 85 minutes | drama | Actors: Catherine Keener, Anton Yelchin, Kaitlyn Dever, Riley Keough, Annie Starke, Molly Shannon, Justin Chatwin, Austin Abrams, Debra Mooney, Maya Rudolph, Cary Elwes, Michelle Hurd, Sarah Ramos, Mary Quick, Mark Famiglietti

As a six-month-old boy, Anton Yelchin came to the United States from Saint Petersburg at the end of 1989 with his parents, a world-famous Russian figure skater pair. In a December 1989 Los Angeles Times interview, his mother said a woman had come up to her, pointed to her son, and said, “He’s beautiful. He will become an actor later on.” Prophetic words, it would turn out later. Although Anton’s parents initially hoped that he would follow in their footsteps. But young Yelchin hadn’t inherited his parents’ figure skating genes. “I really didn’t like it,” he said later. “Then I wanted to become a scientist, but after I set the bathroom on fire, I had to give up on that too. My dream was to become a basketball player. But then again, I’m not exactly a very big, white, Russian-Jewish boy, so that didn’t work out either.” The lady with a clairvoyant eye who, as a baby, already attributed a future to him as an actor, turned out to be right. Yelchin made his debut at age 11 in ‘A Man Mostly Water’ (2000), and would go on to star in ‘Hearts of Atlantis’ (2001), ‘Alpha Dog’ (2006), ‘Terminator Salvation’ (2009), and more. ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ (2013) and three ‘Star Trek’ films. A promising career was nipped in the bud when Yelchin was struck by his own car in a freak accident in June 2016 and died. The talented Russian-American actor was only 27 years old.

The very last film Yelchin made was ‘We Don’t Belong Here’ (2017), by debut director Peer Pedersen. Catherine Keener plays Nancy Green, mother of four. The family is, as they call it, quite dysfunctional. The only one who seems to have them all in a row is the eldest daughter Madeline (Annie Starke), the other children all have psychological problems. Daughter Elisa (Riley Keough) is a successful singer, but beneath the surface lies a lot of suffering. In her youth she experienced a severe trauma that marked her for life. Perhaps that is why she is also stuck in a rather difficult relationship with Tomas (Justin Chatwin). Curiously, her mother is not aware of the real circumstances of her problems, and as a result she does not know why Elisa has severed ties with home. Maxwell (Anton Yelchin) is Nancy’s darling, her only son. He once came out to his youngest sister, backtracked, but has struggled with his sexuality ever since. In one of the first scenes, we see him bleach his hair and then jump out a window – chasing his tragic lover? As if childhood trauma, suicidality and struggles with sexual identity within one family are nothing, there is also the youngest daughter of the Green family, Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who suffers from bipolar disorder and refuses to take her medicines. Mother Nancy doesn’t know it all anymore (not surprising!) and finds support – and more! – with her best friend Joanne (Maya Rudolph).

In case you think: that is a lot that the Green family has to deal with within ninety minutes; You got that absolutely right. How much misery can a man endure? The characters themselves are interesting, but by putting them all together in one film, it becomes a lot. Dosing had been the magic word here. Had Pedersen highlighted the problems of one, or at most two family members, we could have handled it better and the big picture would have been better portrayed. Besides an overdose of problems, ‘We Don’t Belong Here’ also stands out because of its chaos. We see the events through the eyes of Lily, who seems to suffer from delusions in addition to bipolar disorder, because we regularly see things happening on the screen that don’t really happen (turns out later). Very occasionally such a ‘nothing is as it seems’ approach works, but clearly not here. You feel cheated as a viewer. The cast, led by the wonderful Catherine Keener, does its best, but they also fail to bring order to the chaos called ‘We Don’t Belong Here’. We have a tip for debutant Peer Pedersen, who is not only responsible for the direction, but also for the screenplay: make sure you focus a little more next time. Because somewhere the potential of this filmmaker is certainly visible, but in the maze of psychological wrecks, confused storylines and misleading images, all the talent involved gets snowed under.