Densely textured relationship drama explores the full gamut.
Who are the people in your neighborhood? Well, if it is Chicago’s Rogers Park, they are complicated, fraught creatures, striving for love and acceptance in the face of past trauma and present bad decisions. At least, the new film Rogers Park leads us to believe that.
Formerly based in Austin, the creative duo of director Kyle Henry and writer Carlos Treviño have crafted a tale set in their new hood that gets up close and personal with two couples circling around each other as turmoil invades each relationship and individual journey.
While the story was fully scripted, the road to production was a malleable one, with the chosen cast fully engaged in creating the characters as well as crafting their relationships. Several improvisational workshops–as well as literal “first dates” between the actors–make for interactions that ring true to the core.
Deena (Christine Horn) and Chris (Jonny Mars) have seen better days, but with his depression and continuing angst over growing up with an abusive father, they might not have been that much better. Deena is all alpha, working in local politics to affect change, with seemingly nothing able to stand in her way.
Chris’s sister Grace (Sara Sevigny) and her husband Zeke (Antoine McKay) appear to be the perfect example of a happy couple, with a celebration of their ten-year anniversary kicking off the film. That same party also kicks off some intense sibling tension, so the environment for weeping and gnashing teeth is set from the beginning. By tale’s end, a very different pictures emerges of a relationship built on faulty foundations.
Each character embodies a different set of motivations and goals, and it is the interplay of these and the faults in each of the two relationships that keeps the emotional through line bouncing around until the final bell. Small moments of joy and much bigger moments of pain are on the menu.
Rogers Park celebrates the diversity of one of America’s great cities, and an extending shooting schedule means different seasons make their way into the story as well. Melding this physical geography with the emotional one of the main players creates an unflinching look at modern relationships with classic problems. A tale as old as time happening as we speak.
Rogers Park plays through Thursday at AFS Cinema. Click here for showtimes.