Diane

Diane is in her sixties, living in rural Massachusetts. Her days are given to other people: she visits a cousin in hospital, works at a soup kitchen, takes food to friends and calls her son. The son is an addict; he stops constantly, comes back constantly, and blames his mother. Diane keeps doing all of it. Years pass and the people around her die one by one. Kent Jones writes and directs. Mary Kay Place plays Diane and Jake Lacy plays her son. Kent Jones wrote as a film critic for many years and ran the New York Film Festival; this is his first narrative feature. The matter at the centre is not helping but helping as an escape. Diane is paying for something she did in the past and tells nobody; the narrative opens it late and briefly. Mary Kay Place had never had a lead like this in a long career, and the performance was among the most praised of the year. The last section accelerates time; the scenes shorten, the gaps between them widen, and the film gives ageing formally as well. It won the best feature award at the Tribeca film festival. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet American independent drama and performance driven films. Who it is not for: nothing happens, the tone is heavy throughout, and the film offers no consolation about age and death.