Pettyfer’s directorial debut proves admirable
I can’t remember hearing too much about Alex Pettyfer before 2011 when a small boom happened and he was everywhere. Between Beastly, I Am Number Four and In Time, Pettyfer seemed to be the new unstoppable force in Hollywood; a British thesp with looks to rival the likes of any of his contemporaries. His work for Steven Soderbergh in the following year’s Magic Mike solidified the image and launched Pettyfer into an even greater stratusphere. If the actor’s profile hasn’t been as high in recent years as seen by the universally ignored Endless Love remake and the festival hopeful The Strange Ones, it wasn’t for a lack of trying on the actor’s part as he continued to seek out projects that would challenge him. Thankfully, the new indie drama Back Roads offers Pettyfer just such an opportunity as he both steps in front of the camera and into the director’s chair to tell a deeply sensitive story about family and torment.
Twenty-something year old Harley (Pettyfer) has all of a sudden found himself the head of the household after his mother Bonnie (Juliette Lewis) was sent away to prison for killing his father. Left in charge of his three younger sisters, including the troubled Misty (Chiara Aurelia) and the wild Amber (Nicola Peltz), Harley spends his days drinking and his nights toiling away at his job as a local grocery store clerk. When an affair with an older, married woman (Jennifer Morrison) presents itself however, Harley uncovers a darkness from the past he never knew existed.
The trailer and overall marketing for Back Roads has it poised as a thriller filled with the kinds of twists and turns that accompany most modern noirs. While there is a mystery at the film’s center, the pulpiness expected is nowhere to be found. Instead, there is simply the promise of a thriller; the setup for an intriguing suspenser in which characters form alliances before turning on each other. One would expect Back Roads to be such a movie, especially given all the ingredients including an affair with a married woman- itself a device that doesn’t even kick into gear until the beginning of the film’s third act. Even the aforementioned central mystery remains shrouded, despite containing a wealth of material ripe for cinematic interpretation. But Back Roads prefer to talk about such events rather than show them, and while it’s necessary to let characters talk about who they are and where they’ve been (a fact so many movies tend to forget), the film ultimately forgets that it also needs to be experiential. It’s because of this that there are too many times where the film cannot escape a closed-off feeling with the ability to alienate those who would otherwise be compelled by such a story.
Yet there are plenty of times when Back Roads does do right just by simply talking. What the film lacks in genuine thrills, it makes up for by emerging as a story about the effects of trauma. The audience sees this in the character of Harley; the quintessential example of someone who has suffered greatly from the past and is now a wreck of a human being for it. Stunted and preferring to exist only in his own headspace, Harley is someone who is simply waiting around until no one in the world has any use for him anymore. It’s when he’s pulled into the events of his family’s tragic past that he’s able to confront what turned him into the shell he currently is. Back Roads does earn a certain level of intelligence and credibility in the way it examines the effects of trauma on a family; all of whom are broken in a myriad of ways. Who is responsible for the trauma, who tried to prevent it, and the different ways it can both tear a family apart and bind them even closer together proves to be the driving force behind the film, giving off its own brand of suspense. Eventually, Back Roads ventures into territory you wish it wouldn’t, but once it does, the story and its characters come alive in the most telling of ways.
It says a lot about Pettyfer’s talent that he is able to both steer the directorial wheel of Back Roads while also giving his strongest on-screen performance to date. The actor does broken like very few of his generation and takes every effort to successfully illustrate Harley’s eternally wounded nature in tragically beautiful ways. Morrison may be film’s female lead, and she does adequate enough work here. Yet it doesn’t help that her role is largely peripheral and that the movie she’s in fails to make her relevant in the final third. Peltz and Aurelia are stunning in their parts, owning every scene they’re both in thanks to a strong perception of their characters’ troubled journeys, while Lewis reminds us how powerful of a dramatic actress she can be with just two scenes.
Back Roads was originally announced several years ago as a vehicle for Andrew Garfield with the legendary director Adrian Lyne attached to direct. I can only imagine the levels of psychology and humanity the director of Fatal Attraction, Jacob’s Ladder and Unfaithful could have unearthed with material as dark and as rich as this. It isn’t that Pettyfer is an inept director or that his Back Roads is a bad film. As a debut effort, it’s a solidly made movie that gives equal weight to characters, themes and plot mechanics. Still, there’s a sense that a bit more heavy lifting from the likes of a more seasoned pro would have resulted in Back Roads having an even greater reach with its more provocative elements. Whether this is true or not remains irrelevant. This is the film Pettyfer made, and with it comes not just a reaffirmation of his strength as an actor, but also an introduction to a fine and curious filmmaker’s eye that hopefully will continue to explore.
