Heartland: Bloom

A gutsy, gritty performance anchors this road trip story about an older woman struggling with her past actions and relationships.

For Heartland Film Festival schedule and tickets, please click here.

One day Kate has just had enough. She loads up a small bag of clothes, another of postcards and letters, and her dog into an aging Toyota and sets out from her home in Milan, Ind. She barely can be bothered to parcel out a few words to her partner, David, while trying to sneak out of the house at dawn.

Where is she going? It’s not clear if she has any idea herself. Out west, that much is certain. She plans to stop in Kansas City where her son lives with some of her grandchildren. There’s a birthday coming up and that’s at least something of an excuse for what she starts calling a vacation, because it seems other people need a word to describe her actions.

But that’s just a waypoint on a journey whose meaning is as deep to Kate as its endpoint is vague.

That’s the premise of “Bloom,” a lovely little story about Kate, and how she arrived where she is — a place of deep unhappiness and regret. Kate Braun stars in a gutsy, gritty performance that contains not a lot of words but speaks loudly.

Written and directed by Mark Totte, the film does not contain what you’d call a traditional narrative structure. Kate drives and drives, stops here and there, has some car trouble, runs into some young people and hangs out with them for a bit, finally calls her husband, son and daughter to let them know what she’s up to.

In between, there are long dialogue-free reminisces to her life as a young woman (played evocatively by Chloe Caemmerer). Kate left her husband and two young children on a whim, not unlike her current excursion, to seek a life chosen rather than placed before her. This included falling for a drummer (Andrew Wind) and touring with his band in a beat-down old mini school bus they bought for $300.

That life and relationship, like this one, took a turn for the worse. We wonder and worry about Kate, as she explores her past and present and struggles to reconcile the life she’s lived with the one hoped for. At one point she pleads with her daughter, also named Katie: I did alright by you, didn’t I?

Kate seems not able to be satisfied with whatever her current life is, despite multiple attempts to change its course. We get the sense that no matter where she winds up on this trip — first she says Utah, then Nevada, then all the way to California — these unsettled feelings will follow and haunt her.

I’m guessing Kate is about 70, an age when many people face divergent paths as they ease into what can no longer be called anything but golden years. There aren’t a lot of movies featuring women this age, certainly not in long passages of solitude and contemplation. Older ladies are expected to have formed their bonds and cherish them, not shirking them off and looking for new ones. They’re supposed to be “set.”

“Nomadland” sort of broke the mold, or maybe created a new one that “Bloom” is quietly emulating.

“Bloom” is a beautiful movement of sight and sound, with the cinematography by Jon Corum and music by Darby Cicci setting a tone that’s moody and downbeat, but also filled with moments of peace and pure happiness.

Director Totte, in his first feature film behind the camera, eschews the novice’s temptation to anxiously fill every moment with words and motion, instead letting the silences linger, assume meaning and expand in our hearts.

Often the deepest mysteries are the ones we are too afraid to explore, because they involve turning our gaze on ourselves: Am I happy? Why have I done the things I have? Have I helped or hurt those I love? Where am I going?

Kate may not end her wandering with definitive answers to these questions. But what a remarkable woman just for asking.