Cancer at the center of movies can either provide a really moving film-watching experience or resort to extreme manipulation. The fact that Lana Read’s “Forbearance” doesn’t reside or incline towards any of the two ends might feel like a reward on the offset. However, the filmmaker does very little to really make you care for going that extra mile. Her film is so devoid of any emotional connection, that the droopy characters leave you in a state of complete remorse. Not for checking into this story, but for staying with them for 1 hour and 52 minutes of frustrating drivel.
The film follows Callie (Juli Tapken) – a middle-aged high-school teacher, who, after 20-long years of a marriage that has gone sore, has finally decided to put her foot down. She has arranged for divorce papers from her lawyer and has just about mustered the courage to give them to her overbearing, alcoholic, dick-of-a-husband Josh (Travis Hancock).
However, she gets cold feet and doesn’t serve them to him that day, and the very next day Josh is diagnosed with Cancer. Her move to leave his sorry, sexist ass gets pushed back and she goes into caregiver mode yet again. The two of them have to live with each other as their routine leads them again to where they started.
Now, this is an interesting premise we have here, and writer Cedric Gegel (who also plays the couple’s son Jonah and has battled cancer in real life) takes an interesting approach to the material where the Cancer doesn’t magically change Josh and the dynamic they have as a married couple.
But, instead of exploring that with at least a handful of good sequences that establish these characters as humane, the entire film feels like it goes from one cough to another. I mean, there are some really frustrating scenes where we are forced to sit through good-long minutes of badly written dialogue about life and repentance, without any of them going beyond the expositionary state.
The fact that, with all the goods checked into the narrative, the film makes no point whatsoever is the least of its inabilities. Full of horrendous performances that feel like they are competing with each other for who hams better, Forbearance becomes a chore to sit through. And no, it doesn’t get a free pass because it handles a delicate subject matter and looks at redemption, and forgiveness with straight-shot prospects.
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