Director: Gren Wells

Cast: Robert Sheehan, Zoë Kravitz, Dev Patel, Robert Patrick, Kyra Sedgwick

Running Time: 100 minutes

Rating: 15/R

Mental illness is no joke. That is not to say that there cannot be moments of humour, moments we laugh with the characters portraying those suffering and struggling with their disorders. We should not however laugh at them. THE ROAD WITHIN, which could have been, and frankly should have been, a realistic and poignant portrait of young people struggling with mental illnesses, all too often devolves into tedious, stereotypical farce like a bad joke. “Hey, a Tourette’s Syndrome, an OCD and an anorexic walk into a bar…”

Vincent, played with great skill by the talented Robert Sheehan suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome. His mother has just died from complications of alcoholism and his father Robert (Robert Patrick) is a flaming, self-involved emotionally abusive narcissist who is running for some public office.

Vincent, like a large gritty dust-bunny which has been hiding under a bed, is immediately swept by his father in a residential treatment facility for young adults. His roommate is the subsequently horrified and exceedingly shrill Alex played to an intolerable extreme by Dev Patel. Vincent’s unofficial guide Marie (Zoë Kravitz) is a bone thin baby bird of a woman who refuses to eat. Still, with all her dark circles and sharp angles, Kravitz is beautiful and compelling.

As an act of rebellion and, in part to fulfill Vincent’s mothers’ last wishes, the three steal the facility director’s car (Kyra Sedgwick) and take off for the ocean. Any ocean – there’s no cohesive plan in place, and sadly the film too frequently feels exactly the same way. Once the father and facility director begin to chase them it’s all just a run-away train.

THE ROAD WITHIN has a skilled cast, there is no question about that. However the direction vacillates between wild hyperactivity and ennui. The film’s concept is good but it falls down in the screenplay. By trying so hard to prevent the trio from sounding inauthentic, their dialogue is shockingly remedial, callow and unengaging. There is a scene which captures the pervasive and insidious negativity of teenagers and Kravtiz’s delivery is perfect.

Sheehan reaches our hearts even through the contortions and outbursts he so convincingly suffers. We want to love Vincent, Marie and Alex, to love them because of their courage and self-reflection, and we are pulling for them, but even when their small personal victories arrive, very delicately and beautifully I might add, we see what the majority of the story could have been. The greatest loss is that the cast is far beyond what they are given to work with. Each of them is locked within a cell of their own suffering; each is different yet they connect through their illnesses.

Director Gren Wells seems to have been afraid to make the film too “serious” and thus gives its power away by falling back into farce. The pace is uneven and while progress is made both geographically and psychiatrically, there is a tedium which chips away at our empathy. Humour can arise from the darkest and most painful places, and as Dr. Freud said, humour is the highest level of coping mechanism.

Wells has written several screenplays but this is her first directorial effort. The kernel of greatness and sensitivity is there, glimmering, but Wells has to let go of the security blanket.

THE ROAD WITHIN is available on Digital Download from Arrow Films from February 15.

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