Gabriel

Lou Howe's 2015 debut feature follows a young man living with mental illness and his fixation on reaching his former girlfriend. Gabriel, played by Rory Culkin, believes this reunion will set everything in his life right, and that belief is the only engine driving the film forward. Howe refuses to diagnose or explain the character's condition; the viewer stays inside Gabriel's logic and sees the helplessness of the family watching from outside only obliquely. Culkin's performance carries the film: not menacing but fragile, though how exhausting he is for those around him registers in every scene. The problem common to this kind of portrait in American independent cinema is present here too, which is that the story does not arrive anywhere. That is a deliberate choice, but not one for everyone. Who it's for: viewers who like character portraits and films that render mental illness without explaining it from outside. Who it's not for: anyone approaching content about suicidal ideation and self-harm unprepared, or who wants plot and resolution.