North of Normal: Living through Bad Parenting

MOVIE INFO:

NORTH OF NORMAL follows writer Cea Sunrise Person’s unconventional childhood in the wilderness, her complicated relationship with her perpetually pot-smoking teen mom, and her incredible path to a version of normalcy.

REVIEW:

The Hippie movement gets an even handed judgement through both childhood and young adult eyes in Carly’s Stone film adaptation of the model Cea Sunrise Person’s memoir North of Normal. Person’s father and mother raised her to be free of establishment values in a teepee commune established in the western Canadian wilderness. They lived a free, natural lifestyle for the brunt of Cea’s childhood and estranged urban one in Cea’s early adulthood. River Price-Maenpaa plays the young Cea. Amanda Fix acts the late teenage Cea. The two timelines are intercut in stories that flashback and flash forward.

Price-Maenpaa gives a charming and naturalistic performance that depicts the innocent acceptance of life, the growing up without much material wealth but an abundance of affection, security and love. To her, it’s a beautiful and fascinating world. It’s familiar and unimposing. Only the audience sees the trouble signs ahead- the cracks in the grandfather’s (Robert Carlyle) philosophy of living fearlessly, Michelle (Sarah Gadon), his daughter’s-Rea’s mother endless series of boyfriends, her free love living that will tinge rage, frustration, and sadness in the teenage Cea.

When Michelle moves away with Cea from the commune with her then boyfriend, Michelle falls into drug use and psychdellics, her constant need for reassuring lovers who can provide for her financially and economically. She is out of her depth, ill prepared for life in the real world. Cea, anchored by her grandparents love and support, her belief in the grandfather’s exhortation of never giving into fear, adapts readily to city life and its demands. She goes to school and through perseverance and pluck succeeds.

North of Normal is at its best when it focuses on Michelle and Cea. As Cea gains experience and city smarts we see her movement from naïve acceptance of her mother’s decisions, to developing serious concerns about Michelle’s life-style choices, Michelle’s brushing off her petty larcenies as a twisted justification of her and her grandparents anti-capitalism views. Cea is becoming disturbed and angry over her own lack of independence, her loss of the security and stability she had in her childhood, her mother’s lack of self-esteem. Gavin and Fix handle these scenes delicately and beautifully.

North of Normal also is a coming of age film. The disappointments and failures of idealism are a strong sub theme. Cea has questions about her identity, her future path. She endures the expected boyfriend sexual abuse. The grandfather even shows up frail, and cancer ridden to prove the fact that even the best lived life, the one that follows all the health rules, does not guarantee a good ending. It all effects her decision to leave and follow the path that leads to her modeling career. The film never shows that success path, just the uneasy and hard decisions that get Cea there.

North of Normal gives the Hippie view it’s due. Also, its flaws. It’s a typical coming of age drama with a touching and serious mother-daughter plot that is expertly managed and perfectly cast. It’s uncomfortable yet hopeful, and always identifiable, engrossing and sympathetic.