Cancer (of all things) gets a double billing this month with the dramedy 50/50 and Gus Van Sant’s Restless, a simplistic, almost naïve love story about an awkward teen and his relationship with a ghost and a girl suffering from the illness. The theme may be death, but there’s something perversely charming and affecting about its subject matter (written by newcomer Jason Lew), assuredly realized by the director’s quirky eye for details and tender observations.
Henry Hopper (son of the late Dennis Hopper) is convincing as the oddball Enoch, who, after surviving a car crash that claimed the lives of his parents, starts talking to the spirit of a Japanese kamikaze pilot from WWII, Hiroshi (Ryo Kase), and attends funerals in his spare time. Enoch and Hiroshi also take long aimless walks around the quiet town of Portland, Oregon (also the hometown of the director) and throw rocks at passing trains to kill time. Enter Annabel (Alice in Wonderland’s Mia Wasikowska), a pale-looking oddity herself (sort of like Mia Farrow crossed with Gwyneth Paltrow in a short, sassy hairdo) who wears oversized hats and clothes and draws animals and insects in her spare time at cemeteries. The two fall in love, but with Annabel only having three months to live following a cancer diagnosis, Henry has to deal with her impending mortality which might, or might not, drive him further to the edge.
This is a rare film from the veteran Van Sant which manages to be sweet and suitably light-handed. Other themes and issues like family and responsibility (dealt through Enoch’s relationship with his aunt whom he blames for his parents’ death, and Annabel’s tender relationship with her sister) are brought to the fore to further deepen the characters, but are never overbearing. Van Sant chooses instead to focus on Enoch and Annabel’s evolving but slowly fading love story to up the film’s emotional quotient, and it works. Wasikowska is such an effortless actress, and paired with the ethereal-looking Hopper, the two conjure up a fragile beauty that’s truly undeniable, beautifully captured by cinematographer Harris Savides (Somewhere). Twee, heartbreaking, fragile, otherworldly and confident—Restless is how all love stories are meant to be told.