Director: Andrew Durham
Writer: Andrew Durham
Stars: Emilia Jones, Scoot McNairy, Geena Davis
Synopsis: A young girl recounts growing up in San Francisco in the ’70s and ’80s with her gay dad.
Humans make parenting complicated. We’ve figured out all of these different methods, styles, and mantras to try and bring up a child to be better than ourselves, or to at least do better than what we could. A single parent has it the worst because all the people that may challenge the way they would do something are entirely outside of the situation. The child might notice something off, but to articulate it would be to cause chaos. It’s even stranger to be the child of a single parent when that parent has the opportunity to finally live the life they had always hoped for themselves.
Fairyland is based on a memoir of the same name by Alysia Abbott. It’s about her growing up and learning that while her father loved her mother, he was also keeping his sexuality a secret. As a film we only see what the filmmakers adapt. We don’t always get the nuances that adult Alysia Abbott looking back on her life can imbue onto the page. Andrew Durham’s script does a good job of parsing through the memories, though. The script’s focus first on young Alysia’s (Nessa Dougherty) innocent curiosity and then on teens and twenties Alysia’s (Emilia Jones) angsty frustrations evolves our understanding of how her relationship with her father shaped her sense of self.
The sharp focus on Alysia is also what makes the film drag a little. It isn’t obvious at first that this is the intention of the filmmakers and if you hadn’t read the source material, it may take a few scenes to really catch on. It’s easy to see Steve (Scoot McNairy) is attracted to men, but it takes a while before we understand what the deeper situation is. It’s easier to understand this with a narrator, but there isn’t one until the very end. As much as it is frustrating, not knowing everything up front makes the full emotional journey more fulfilling.
Director Andrew Durham puts this personal story into a larger context of LGBTQ+ history in San Francisco. Durham and editors Peter Canada Hagen and Lawrence Klein weave in footage of what was first Gay Freedom Day and became Gay Pride. It brings the film into the past without the need for a larger budget to transform city streets or hire thousands of period appropriate background actors. Set decorators Kiowa Le Clec’h and Mariana Urban also populated the sets with the perfect accoutrements including campaign signs for pioneering gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk.
Fairyland also acknowledges that it’s hard to understand the larger context of the events around one’s life while you live it. There’s this scene in the film where Alysia comes home for winter break and she sees a note from Steve to meet him at an address. She has a pleasant conversation with Sue (Atim Udoffia) on the porch and the word hospice is casually thrown in, but it’s obvious this word doesn’t penetrate Alysia’s psyche. She finds Steve at the bedside of JD (Cabe Thompson) and it’s obvious to those of us who are putting some things together based on hospice and the time period that JD is suffering from AIDS. It takes Steve outright telling Alysia what a hospice is in order for her to understand the volunteering Steve is doing and why he feels he must do it.
As much as Steve comes across as the bad parent, it’s thanks to Scoot McNairy’s honest portrayal that we forgive him. McNairy is a fierce powder keg of emotion, but he understands how to reign it in. His big scenes at the end aren’t played with crazy tears and emotion, but with a tremendous restraint. He’s an actor that rarely gets to be as expressive or emotive with his face and it’s intriguing to see him do so. In a nearly wordless scene as Steve begins to fall for Eddie (Cody Fern) we see him gesture and look in a way that conveys beautifully how Steve is feeling. It’s a very good performance.
Fairyland is a film that grows into itself. It’s a coming of age story that we see evolve as Alysia grows into it. Her adolescent angst and Steve’s constant reinvention develop side by side. It’s a good story if a bit slow paced at times. It’s a film that examines the single parent and child relationship in a very unique circumstance, but can speak to all of us that have had to reassess our parents as adults.
