Picture the scene: it’s 2002, small town Arkansas. A bunch of teenage girls are having a sleepover to celebrate the end of the school year. Michelle Branch is at the height of her powers. George Bush is president. And these teenagers are not being very nice to each other – surprise, surprise.
In this early scene in “Mouse,” directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson with a script from O’Sullivan, the girls are playing a game they call “personal feedback” – AKA, time to pick each other apart. It’s Callie’s (Chloe Coleman) turn, but everyone is having a hard time with her. The best they can come up with is, “You’re not as perfect as you think you are.” That should tell you something about Callie – talented, pretty, sweet, really difficult to insult.
Her best friend Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) is a different story. Minnie is also pretty and sweet, but she’s content to be a bit of a wallflower while Callie takes the spotlight. So, when the girls forget whether they’ve already given feedback to Minnie or not, Cara (Audrey Grace Marshall) slides in with a rather cutting remark: “I always kind of forget you exist.”
But, when tragedy takes Callie from Minnie’s life, she’s forced to figure out who she is outside of her best friend – a new challenge she finds herself ill-prepared for. At its heart, “Mouse” is a coming of age story – both for Minnie, who doesn’t know how to both miss Callie and grow without her, and for Callie’s mom, Helen (Sophie Okonedo), who is dealing with an identity shift of her own. “Mouse” tackles that grief, in all its messy iterations, with a deft hand.
Through Callie’s death, Minnie and Helen form a bond. It’s something that benefits both of them in their grief, but at times, when it starts to morph into something resembling the mother-daughter relationship Helen had with Callie, that lack of boundaries becomes unhealthy for both of them.
An undercurrent of class conflict runs throughout “Mouse” from the second Callie picks up Minnie for school at the film’s beginning, Minnie’s embarrassment over her small, cramped house apparent in the tense set of her shoulders. She’s embarrassed of her home, and of her mother, Barbara (Tara Mallen), in a way that can make her quite nasty – it’s quite the balance for Kupferer as an actress, dealing with her character’s class insecurity and how that infects her grief.
Minnie begins spending more time with Helen, and Helen – desperate to still feel like a mom – happily welcomes her. Helen cooks Minnie homemade dinners. She does her hair. She gives her singing lessons. She does all the things that Minnie’s own mother is too overworked and busy to do. It’s heartbreaking to watch Minnie’s mother confronted with these obstacles – often, obstacles outside of her control. But Minnie isn’t aware enough of the context of class to understand that her mother is doing her best – she just sees Helen as the paragon of what a mom should be.
It’s a complicated line for the film to walk, as Helen and Minnie both make choices in a blind daze, hurting people around them in an effort to make themselves feel better. But “Mouse” isn’t afraid to let its characters live in their confusion, and the performances equally capture the messy and tender place where loss can leave us. Kupferer in particular is quite excellent. It’s impossible not to watch her and feel that jolt of adolescence – the pain and the awkwardness all dialed up to eleven. But, as Minnie grows, Kupferer grows too, settling into a place of confidence by the time Minnie finds herself ready to step into the spotlight all on her own.
