Director: Lilian Mehrel
Writer: Lilian Mehrel
Stars: Ayden Mayeri, Amira Casar, Jose Condessa
Synopsis: June and her Persian-British mom Lela travel to the romantic Azores for a grief anniversary, with contrasting ways of coping. A hot-and-deep surfer takes them on a tour as we surf the waves of life, loss, flirting – an unforgettable ride.
Happiness is a fascinating concept. We view it as one of our basic emotions, but it’s more elusive than we give it credit for. It’s also far more subjective than it should be. Our happiness is different from your happiness is different from their happiness. Let’s not get started on how angry other people’s happiness can make us. Honeyjoon, while a film about a grief anniversary, grapples with happiness or at least how we interpret happiness in another person.
Lilian Mehrel’s script is very funny with a deep poignancy to it. She balances her characters perfectly between two poles of grief. Lela (Amira Casar) is very much a doom scrolling wallower who wants to bring down the mood of everyone to her level. On the other hand is June (Ayden Mayeri) who wants to move forward by finding joy in living life beyond grief. These poles create a terrific conflict and make for an even better catharsis between mother and daughter.
The two leads of Honeyjoon are just perfect for these roles. Amira Casar has impeccable timing which turns her cringe-inducing lines into very funny moments. Casar plays these moments very straight and like the woman of conviction Lela is. Lela’s a woman broken by a loss that came too soon, but she is still a person with great empathy for the terrors other people experience in the world. Casar takes us on a terrific emotional roller coaster with the deftness of a skilled craftsperson.
Ayden Mayeri is a skilled comedic actor with a way of getting us to see the emotional strain of June’s relationship with her mother. Mayeri, as June, is charming and a bit hapless. This leads to a spectacular running bit of June flirting with the eligible bachelors she meets and striking out as they are all aloof service professionals. It’s obvious her life isn’t going the way she planned, but she still has a sense of optimism about it. She knows she can do it if she just puts herself out there. Yet, when June is at her lowest, Mayeri really delivers there, too. Mayeri has a strong sense of this character and is able to bring out an inner turmoil that is affecting on screen.
As fun and poignant as the film is, there are still many unanswered questions. Like a lot of films, we don’t particularly need the answers, yet it feels like there’s something missing. These characters are very lived in and nuanced, but they lack some concrete details that would have added much more to the tapestry of the film. It can be hard to get everything in when a film is only 75 minutes, but a couple of more minutes of backstory couldn’t have hurt.
Honeyjoon embraces the past and the present in various ways, but none more intriguing than its use of different film mediums. For the ethereal landscapes of the flashbacks, Mehrel and cinematographer Ines Gowland use physical film. It gives these shots texture and ambiance that couldn’t be found in the present’s digital medium. Interspersed with these two are several clips of vertical footage shot from a smart phone. While this could be annoying to mix in the harsh HD with the crisp digital, these scenes add a component of realism to this trip. 21st century humans document their lives in a way that no other past humans did. These scenes make us feel as if we are seeing what it would have been like to follow this story on June’s social media pages. The out of context shots and the ones that show us a version of happiness are how we would try and understand June’s experience. It’s a wonderful blend of techniques.
Honeyjoon is a very good comedy that tackles some difficult issues. The leads are perfect and while the film as a whole leaves us wanting more, what we get is very enjoyable. The film will make you think about the happiness we project versus the happiness we actually feel and how there’s often a thin line between the two.
