Boundaries stars Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer, two innately likeable and talented actors, as respectively Laura, a daughter who is unable to keep any firm boundaries, and Jack, her father who keeps crossing them, but it all works out, and they become a closer family as a result. In the special features, Shana Feste, the director and writer of the movie, admitted that the film is autobiographical, which makes it awkward to criticize. Have you ever had a person tell you what this person believes is a happy and funny story, but you just wanted to pull this person aside and say, “No. It is horrible. You were gaslit your entire life. You deserve better,” but because you suspect that this person will just get defensive and write you off anyway as someone who doesn’t get it, you just nod and smile stiffly with your eyes wide open thinking, “Yikes! I hope this person gets help because they are going to die unhappy and never know why.” This movie helps you experience that sensation for one hundred forty four minutes.
Laura is a single mother of Henry, a kid who keeps getting in trouble at school because he draws naked pictures of people, usually adults, to show their souls, but trust me, it felt meaner than it sounds. Laura hoards animals because she understandably feels bad for them being abandoned, but that does not excuse living in filth. Her vapid, rich friend is her boss—how did they become friends? Unsurprisingly Laura isn’t very good at her job because she has to deal with her son’s shenanigans instead of working, but because she is hot, her coworker stupidly covers for her (run). She hides things from her therapist, who can sense that Laura is faltering in her resolve not to be in touch with her dad. Laura allows herself to get roped into her dad’s drama, which leads to a road trip a half hour into the proceedings.
A road trip sounds like fun, but it is not. Boundaries is one of those movies that winks at criminality because it involves pot and white people. If you are an old, white person, it is practically an American staple to consider that old person irreverent and full of joie de vive if he curses and smokes pot. I would have less of an issue with this trope if children like Trayvon Martin weren’t demonized with spurious claims that he smoked pot once thus he deserved to die, or if black people were not arrested for possessing pot in states where it is legal in higher numbers than white people. Whenever one of my white friends talks about getting high or asks if I do, I answer, “I’m too black to do that.” Regardless of the disparity in law enforcement, I don’t even like blue ibuprofen, but an additional incentive is knowing that my whole life could be destroyed if I even make a mistake like not signaling when I’m driving my car, forget gray area criminal acts like drugs.
One second with his grandpa, Henry conspires with Jack to sell marijuana so he can go to a more open-minded school. In theory, this idea isn’t too bad because it would solve a lot of his problems and his mother’s, but he ends up teaming up with his grandfather to put Laura in unhealthy situations that she repeatedly and explicitly states that she does not want to be in such as meeting up with her ex, Henry’s father. Then they act like she is a jerk or a loser for feeling that way. Then when the situation turns out badly, they act sympathetically, but also like she should have known better than to fall for her lies. Her ex acts like the experience is a moment of personal growth. I think that the element that most irritated me about this dynamic was that Henry has known Jack for two seconds, but he sides with him instead of his mother. Henry is a little shit, and not all kids are. Usually kids of single parents suffer from adultification in order to survive. Instead he does not care if she loses her job or gets psychologically harmed by meeting up with his dad. Laura uses this experience as a way to finally move on because she has closure and confirmation that her ex was a jerk, but the fact that he never sees their son was all the evidence that I needed. No need to rinse and repeat when the data is already clear and conclusive.
Boundaries implicitly seems to brush off the therapist’s admonishments in exchange for experiencing the messiness of life and learning from bad experiences, which is objectively a good idea if you are not entering those experiences knowing that they are going to be bad. Parents are supposed to protect their children, not put them in harm’s way. Jack gets to cause damage and play the wise old man after being the instigator. He does not respect her: her time, her psychological or physical well being. He undermines her as a parent.
Boundaries is an insidious movie in what bad behavior it winks at and what bad behavior is considered pathetic or abhorrent. With the stubborn exception of Kristen Schaal, who has made a career out of playing irrepressible, quirky women who are like ducks and water—negative assignations of their self worth never rest on them for long, but slide right off, most of the women characters, including the unseen therapist, are written off and summarily dismissed as irrelevant or horrible, but men behaving badly is an amusing characteristic that shows that they are free spirits living fully, and if you can’t get on board, you need to loosen up. While I agreed that the party requirements were ridiculous, and I enjoy watching a good rage quit, I would have enjoyed it more if that rage was also directed at the men in her life, including her son and her father, who experience zero negative consequences for wasting her time and abusing her trust.
Instead Boundaries gives us a happy ending that seemed like a nightmare to me. We’ve witnessed first hand that if Jack and Henry don’t agree with Laura, even though she is putting in the work and time to do what they asked her to do while she puts her life on hold to make their lives better, they will just act like she is crazy, ignore her and do what they want and put her in harmful situations. A happy ending would have been to leave Henry at his father’s place and say, “Figure out,” and when her dad turns up after wasting her time, she threatens to call the police if he doesn’t leave and says that he is trespassing and in possession of marijuana. “I found you a home. In jail! Bye! I know how you love riding around in the backseat while other people drive. You think that you’re better than this. I’ll give you a reason to need to get high. Pay back! I’m better at abandoning than you (insert Jenifer Lewis laugh).”
The only life that they want is one in which she is in complete service to their whims, and she has no life outside of them. If there was ever a moment that I wish that I could have teleported into a movie and interact with a character, it is when Henry is at home and says to his mother, “I’m really fucking hungry.” I would have appeared in front of him like magic and replied, “Go to the kitchen and feed yourself, you spoiled brat. God, I hate you people! You’re not special or talented so you better start learning how to feed yourself because it may be the only skill that makes you employable, you little entitled jerk.” Then I would have dragged Laura’s ass back to the therapist while helping her look for a job because she screwed up the one dysfunctional thing that was slightly working in her favor.
Thank you to the movie theaters for saving me from myself by pulling the movie after one week and if it showed in the second week, it showed at a time too inconvenient for anyone with a job to see Boundaries. I would have been so mad if I had paid to see this crap. Dear Vera, please ease up on taking roles as mothers with strange sons. Dear CV, do you really need the money this bad?