By John Corrado
In her debut feature Tangles, director Leah Nelson crafts an incredibly moving animated film that poignantly handles the devastating experience of Alzheimer’s and how it impacts a whole family.
The film is an adaptation of author and illustrator Sarah Leavitt’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. At the start of the film, Sarah (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) is just beginning to find herself in San Francisco, with her job at an underground queer magazine, and new girlfriend Donimo (Samira Wiley).
Then she gets called back home to Maine, where she finds that her mother Midge (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is behaving oddly, not only forgetting little things, but also having mood swings. The family dismisses it as menopause, while her professorial husband Rob (Bryan Cranston) seeks naturopathic treatments.
The worst comes to pass when Midge is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. From here, Tangles poignantly details Sarah adapting to her new role as caretaker, while dealing with her family’s denial, added tensions with sister Hannah (Beanie Feldstein), and the heartbreak of watching her mother’s memory slip away.
The characters are brought to life through pitch-perfect voice work from the entire cast, including the distinctive voices of Louis-Dreyfus and Cranston, delivering dramatic vocal performances. Seth Rogen, who also produced the film with Evan Goldberg in a dramatic departure for their Point Grey production banner, lends his voice to the film as Hannah’s boyfriend.
It’s heart-wrenching stuff, but Tangles also blends in moments of humour and some surrealistic touches that work due to the animated medium. It’s a unique experience. The evocative black-and-white animation adds to the emotion. It’s a film that is almost guaranteed to move you to tears on multiple occasions, and certainly did so for me.
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