The film-makers Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson know their way around the peaks and valleys of the everyday. Their breakout 2019 feature Saint Frances, written and starring O’Sullivan, sublimated what could be big strokes of drama – abortion, postpartum depression, getting older, lost time – into the unremarkable (on the outside) relationship between an aimless 34-year-old and her six-year-old nannying charge. The daily humors and challenges in one woman’s life were not particularly dramatic or arresting, but rendered with such curiosity and acceptance as to feel radical.
Ghostlight, the duo’s new feature premiering at the Sundance film festival, traffics in a similar leveling of mundanity and insight. (It’s also written by O’Sullivan.) There’s an appealing naturalness to the project, probably owing to its tight-knit origins: O’Sullivan and Thompson are real-life partners directing a real-life family in their city, Chicago. Dan Mueller (Keith Kupferer) is an emotionally bottled construction worker, all slumped shoulders and soft mumblings, except for the few moments he bursts forth with startling rage. He’s distant from wife Sharon (Kupferer’s wife Tara Mallen), an elementary school music teacher seeking to reconnect. Neither know how to handle Daisy (their daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer, bristling with talent), a high-schooler with a near-terminal case of teenage nightmare syndrome. It’s often funny, how easily Daisy can escalate and derail a moment, until O’Sullivan’s finely tuned script and Mallen Kupferer’s hot-blooded performance reveal just how derailed she is.
