Weightless

Several long, wordless stretches arise during the film, all of them thoughtful. Jaron Albertin, directing his first feature, cultivates tension in small moments and doesn’t force the drama.

The feature debut from music promo and commercials director Jaron Albertin is, as you would expect, a stylistically assured piece of work. But this tale of a father with mental health issues who finds himself suddenly responsible for a son he has never met is also unexpectedly restrained dramatically.

Weightless is a bleak slice-of-life movie that’s tightly focused and stylistically cohesive. The narrative is not without interest and the film’s atmospheric mood is effective. But ultimately its slow pacing (unremittingly so) grows tedious and the ending is a non-ending.

Jaron Albertin’s mix of crisp realism and oblique dream logic results in a haunting experience.... Still, while his first feature (shot by Darren Lew) may be gorgeous, the characters in this rural family drama prove so amorphous that their struggles engender detachment instead of empathy.

The result is artful (and well-acted) enough to intrigue, yet underdeveloped enough in the writing to frustrate. Not the least frustrating thing here is that Nivola gives a serious, hardworking performance in a role that nonetheless remains more opaque than many past ones in which he’s had a fraction of the screen time.

Though hardly a failure, the serious-minded work is less affecting than it might've been, relying sometimes on hints that are needlessly ambiguous and on symbols that don't quite click.

The nicest thing that can be said about this demure little Canadian trifle is that it’s a film that finally gives the gifted, self-assured and sadly underrated Alessandro Nivola a leading role.