DEPARTURE REVIEWED
“Departure” has to be about the 100th teen drama that I’ve watched in the last 6 months. While LGBTQ films require a certain degree of respect, I was left a little confused by this film. I get that it’s basically a tale about a young man making sense of an impending move and his family splitting up. But, the horndog push in on his lust target creates something odd onscreen. It gets even odder when we find that our focal young man’s crush is also revving up his mother’s cougar engine.
Having a teenage boy and his mother pine after the same young man shouldn’t be out of place now. Still, it feels predatory in a way that kinda undermines what the film seems to want to achieve. I get the need to have an angle that turns a film into something other than a soapbox or Young Adult romance. It’s just could there not have been a better way to pull this off? The film paints in a ton of crude strokes that feels like a lesser director was trying to saying something important. I expected a bit more.
FILM STATS
- 1 hr and 49 mins
- Not Rated
- Wolfe Video
