Thumbsucker

A film set in Oregon. Justin is seventeen. He still sucks his thumb and tells no one. His family is odd. His father is a former athlete; he was injured and built his life around the injury. His mother works at a care home. She admires a television actor and enters a competition. Both parents want to be called by their first names. Not mother and father. Justin goes to his dentist. Perry tries hypnosis and gives him a suggestion. The habit stops. Then something else starts. The boy is scattered at school, inattentive and restless. A doctor makes a diagnosis and prescribes medication. From there the film is a story of change. On the medication Justin becomes an entirely different person. He joins the debate team. He talks, he wins, and he is noticed at school for the first time. At the same time he hardens. He listens to no one and criticises everyone around him. What the narrative is interested in is not addiction but diagnosis: its idea is that everyone needs an explanation, and that naming a thing does not solve it but moves it. The father's line says something separate. He explains his own life with an injury and does not want to give the explanation up. There is a girl as well. Rebecca is a classmate and their relationship fits no shape. The tone is dry. The narrative enlarges no scene emotionally. The ending offers no resolution and Justin arrives at no answer. The source is Walter Kirn's novel. Elliott Smith's songs are used and The Polyphonic Spree wrote original music for it. This is Mike Mills's first feature; he had worked in graphic design and music videos before. Lou Taylor Pucci, Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio, Keanu Reeves, Vince Vaughn and Kelli Garner are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes American independent cinema of the 2000s and stories of adolescence. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a clear outcome; the narrative is deliberately scattered and closes no line fully.