Ambiguous understatement Apparently, "Take Me to the River" seemed so strange to our viewers that even a few of those who watched spawned no less strange reviews that have nothing to do with what is happening on the screen. The average review of the viewer boils down to the following: a young gay man goes with his parents to a family celebration to provincial relatives-farmers, where he tries in every possible way to hide his orientation, which entails a lot of lies, in which he gets confused and brings suspicion of a crime he did not commit. Morality is unexpected: all evil comes from tolerance, which is the perversion of genuine spiritual values.
A brief synopsis on Kinopoisk contradicts such reviews: “Family celebration easily turns into a real hell when there is a gay teenager in the house who refuses to hide his sexual orientation.” He expects ridicule and barbs from his stunned Nebraska cousins. Alas, something much more insidious is happening, but it also has a very remote relation to the film. I will do my part too!
To begin with, the gay teenager is indeed present, called Ryder and played by his wonderful actor Logan Miller. Just at the beginning of the film, he asks his parents, who drag him from California to Nebraska to meet with numerous relatives on the occasion of a family holiday, whether they told them that he is gay. Parents gently but firmly make it clear that where they are going, it is not yet time to do. Ryder, like any teenager, is prone to maximalism, but takes note. That is, the question of orientation is defined for him, there is no reflection on this topic, everything is in order with his parents, calm and adequate people. In other words, this movie is not about homosexuality in a conservative environment, although a conservative society will be represented in all its glory. Then what does this have to do with Ryder's orientation? No, this is not a case where a gay programmer or a black person or any other potential “minority” is introduced for political correctness. In the case of Ryder, it is in this story that the sexual orientation of the character matters, because clarifying this issue would resolve a certain ambiguity, the victim of which is the guy, but where he is, the law of silence reigns, giving rise to misinterpretation of the essence of what is happening. So the film is built - something strange and unpleasant happens, but it is not clear what exactly and even idyllic landscapes look like they are fraught with a threat. “Take me to the river” is a detective without investigation, punishment without crime, and the meaning of what happened becomes clear only in the final and fits into only one word, but it is only implied, and instead an affirmative question with an icy smile: “Do you remember?”
Urban strangers and local rural ones are a frequent leitmotif in American cinema, when civilization gives way to uncouthness, this motif is also present in Matt Sobel's film. Relatives from Nebraska with numerous offspring seem to be a whole horde in comparison with the Ryder family and frankly press the masses. Their provincial arrogance for "those urban" is expressed in snide barbs and giggles, and Ryder's too-short shorts and his vintage sunglasses become a whole event. But this family celebration can not be a hindrance and it lasts, it seems, endlessly until something happens that is the main mystery of the film – the cry of 9-year-old Molly, who ran out of the barn with a stain of blood on her dress. Since Ryder came to the barn with her, this strange Ryder in ridiculous red shorts, which, in the opinion of relatives, are more like underwear, and in general he is somehow not so, too strange, then it is he and this strangeness that immediately begin to be suspected of something obscene even despite the fact that almost immediately it turns out that nothing irreparable happened to Molly. The celebration continues, the scandal is quickly suppressed, but the question hovers in the air - what happened? And no less nasty subtext - "something obscene." Ryder instantly becomes an outcast in the crowd, but to run is to admit what is not and the meeting of loving relatives goes on as usual, although the guy is instructed to spend the night not in the house, but in an abandoned shed. All this reeks of madness, and at the same time recalls the films of the Dane Thomas Winterberg “The Triumph” and “The Hunt” (in the first case – the incessant ritual of a family celebration, when it would be wiser to run away in different directions, rather than continue a tense feast, in the second – an unfair accusation that makes a person a pariah).
However, this is not all, and the director continues to whip up a sense of paranoia, stepping into the very fragile territory of child sexuality. The girl Molly turns out to be an unreadable character whose behavior confuses both the viewer and Ryder. In a sense, we are facing a completely uncontrollable and very intrusive creature, which gives out a whole set of “seduction” that an older girl can perfectly master, but not a 9-year-old child. And yet. And even the finale, which sheds light on what happened, and at the same time radically changed the meaning of the whole story, does not give a direct answer to the question of what Molly really is. Only one thing is clear - in the cinema there was another child who is not sorry to nail (the girl from the "Children's Hour" Wyler warm hello).