Echo Valley
Julianne Moore is both sympathetic and just plain pathetic in this tightly wound psychological thriller about a mother undone by her limitless love for her addicted daughter.
They say a mother’s love is something perfect and endless, but sometimes there is too much of a good thing.
In “Echo Valley,” Julianne Moore plays a mom, Kate, struggling with her young adult daughter, Claire (Sydney Sweeney), who is living with substance use disorder. Her ex-husband, Richard (Kyle MacLachlan), complains that Kate coddles the kid, giving her patience and money which she then immediately plies back into her next drug binge.
He’s got a point; Claire has been in and out of rehab, and often shows up at either of her parents’ houses, strung out and looking to score.
But then when Claire gets very deep into trouble, Kate tries once again to bail her out — only to find her own life sucked into the vortex of a bleak moral quandary.
Directed by Michael Pearce — who made the excellent “Beast,” Jessie Buckley’s 2017 breakout — from a script by Brad Inglesby (“Mare of Easttown”), “Echo” is a tightly wound thriller that ends up trying to be two different movies. I really liked both, though the handoff between them isn’t handled particularly well.
The first part deeply explores the relationship between Kate and Claire, a space where there is much love but also plenty of trauma. Kate tries to project maternal authority, but is undone by her own passivity and a recent tragedy: the death of her wife, Patty, a few months ago. Her brief interaction with Richard imply it was this affair at the horse riding farm Kate runs that ended her first marriage. What’s more, Kate is barely keeping the place above water and has to keep asking Richard for handouts.
Not surprisingly, Claire figures she can pull the same stunt with her mom. In her latest appearance, she shows up having had a tiff with her skeezy boyfriend, Ryan (Edmund Donovan), and got back at him by throwing his clothes and stuff off a bridge. Claire just shows up on the doorstep, expecting be fed and housed, and given a new phone too.
And it works. Kate can’t help playing the role of sucker.
Sweeney, who’s taken on a sexpot persona in pop culture I don’t think is helpful to her career, is sly and manipulative as Claire. She taunts her mother with her own sense of worthlessness, such as rejecting her invitation to take creative writing classes at the local community college. It’s the classic push/pull of the addictive personality — acting badly, then expressing shame, but only as far as it needs to get what she wants, and then the cycle repeats.
Moore’s performance is typical for her: quietly spectacular, unshowy but with deep roots sunk into the ground. Kate is sympathetic, but also at times just plain pathetic. We root for her to do better, to take a stand and show some guts, and we’re continually disappointed when she fails to.
The second portion of the movie is dominated by Jackie, Claire and Ryan’s violent, repulsive dealer, played by Domhnall Gleeson with shark-like charisma. He shows up early in the story, casually beating up Claire and Ryan in front of Kate, and she does nothing other than a little bluster about calling the cops. He’ll be back for good in the last act, while Claire exits stage left, as the movie turns to a more typical potboiler type of plot involving extortion, mislaid bodies, insurance schemes, and so forth.
It’s well done stuff, as Kate finally comes to recognize the error of her overly empathetic ways. I was hoping the movie would come back full circle to explore how these events will impact Kate and Claire’s relationship going forward, and maybe even with Richard, but it opts for something else.
Fiona Shaw also turns up as Jes, Kate’s friend and another lesbian farm owner. (They trade jokes about how this is a thing in their uppercrust New England parts.) She’s the reliable sort who you just know always has your back. Albert Jones plays the probing police detective when things get to that inevitable part.
“Echo Valley” is well-made and acted, the sort of thing that is wonderful at getting the audience spun up into a state of high anxiety. It doesn’t always mesh well its moving parts, but the individual pieces are strong enough to recommend.
“Echo Valley” is available June 13 in a limited theatrical run and streaming on the Apple TV+ platform.
