There are a lot of jobs in America that make the world a worse place to live. Most people keep working those jobs. Filmmaker Monica Sorelle looks to explain how that bitter pill gets swallowed in her debut feature “Mountains,” which follows Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), a blue-collar Haitian American who becomes complicit in gentrifying his own neighborhood.
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After a low-key festival run, the Tribeca discovery is getting a limited opening in New York and L.A., but not before a theatrical bow in Miami — the film’s setting and Sorelle’s birthplace. That hometown pride is evident in “Mountains,” which carries an undeniable veracity and compassion. Its narrative proves less insightful, however: too wary to crack into its protagonist’s troubled psyche, softening the film’s worthwhile political anxieties into sympathetic messaging that seems ho-hum and predetermined.
Like many American immigrants, gentle giant Xavier aspires to provide a better life for his family. His wife Esperance (Sheila Anozier) is a passionate seamstress and a fantastic cook. She entertains Xavier’s self-enchanted ramblings about saving up for a bigger house, though she seems satisfied enough with their current abode. Their son Junior (Chris Renois) is chasing something else. While his parents chat in Haitian Creole, Junior mostly speaks English, especially when he’s brushing off explaining why he keeps leaving the house during dinner time — a source of increasing anxiety and disappointment for his father.
There’s trouble brewing, but it’s in paradise for Sorelle. The family’s home life is lushly rendered by the filmmaker, whose direction prioritizes giving enough space for it to breathe. It’s an effort evident in the colorful interior decor, the patient rhythms of certain chores and the considered, hushed tone of conversations. The immigrant household is held sacred, and sacred things are oft threatened.
Breaking from the style of many American indies, DP Javier Labrador often eschews handheld camerawork for “Mountains,” instead leaning toward sturdy, unmoving compositions. The approach lends the domestic side of the film a firm tranquility. But that uncanny visual balance also matches the way Xavier indifferently compromises to insidious market forces. On the job, the man dons a hard hat and construction jacket — not to build up his neighborhood, but to tear it down. His longtime demo crew now waits for permits to clear before leaping upon vacated houses like vultures, bulldozing them to make way for newer (but not necessarily nicer) ones.
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“Mountains” sticks mostly to Xavier’s side, swaying between work and home. As a leading man, Nazaire is such a compelling, unguarded screen presence that it takes a while before the realization hits that the film’s politely studied relationships aren’t going anywhere at all. The script frustratingly withholds the stoic character from introspection without detailing why (class anxiety or old-fashioned masculine stubbornness are possible explanations).
Whether he’s mediating a fight between a coworker and a racist nepo hire or demanding his college-dropout son stay home for dinner, Xavier seems compelled to maintain status quo across his life, under the impression that trusting the process will serve him in the end. Maurelle and co-writer Robert Colom don’t consider this behavioral pattern as something to be thoroughly contextualized or even considered; instead, it is meant to be broken — and not until the very end of the movie at that. The story bumbles from one thing to another before lurching toward an ending, with Xavier suddenly considering the prospect that he’s had enough. The arc is swift and painfully awkward.
One narrative tangent makes an impact though, when “Mountains” follows Junior outside of the house, revealing that he moonlights as a standup. His delivery wins crowds, but his jokes are not very thoughtful: hawking stereotypes about immigrant parents being wet blankets. The sequence, positioned almost midway in the runtime, represents an unexpected and welcome expansion beyond the film’s narrow focus on Xavier’s contradictory lifestyle and his failure to see it.
Through the content of his comedy act, Junior’s cynicism toward his background comes into sharper focus. And it begs a thorny question: is it really worth shit-talking your immigrant parents behind their backs to appease a crowd of giggly Miami transplants? As with the rest of the film, Sorelle withholds from making many judgments here too. But it’s no coincidence that it’s at this rinky-dink open mic, a setting where the filmmaker stretches outside her affectionate comfort zone, that “Mountains” becomes more penetrating and more lasting.
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