It’s common for films to explore parent-child relationships, but not as often are they about the dynamic between a parent and his child’s spouse, particularly if said child is still alive and around. In that way, A Little Prayer is an odd specimen, since its primary characters are Bill (David Stathairn), a veteran who runs a business with his son David (Will Pullen), and his daughter-in-law, David’s wife Tammy (Jane Levy), who may just be the most selfless, accommodating person in the world…
Tammy and David live in the back house of Venida (Celia Weston) and Bill’s home in small-town North Carolina,and they all interact most frequently each morning as they all prepare for work. Bill and David work together, while Tammy wears a Target name tag and Venida dons a period costume for her tour guiding job. Bill and David don’t talk much at work or home, and the serenity of the pleasant morning conversation that Tammy has with her loving in-laws is disrupted when their daughter Patti (Anna Camp) arrives like a hurricane with her daughter Hadley (Billie Roy) in tow, determined to leave her drug-addicted husband.
There isn’t a particularly direct plot in A Little Prayer, which deals much more with the way its characters relate to each other in general. When Bill catches David flirting with his secretary Narcedalia (Dascha Polanco) and confronts him about it, David doesn’t even bother to deny that something is going wrong, choosing instead to chastise his father for prying into his personal life. This family isn’t one that discusses its feelings or really anything at all, and there are multiple moments where one encourages another not to dwell on something or bring it up since it’s simply not how they communicate.
Like his last film, Abundant Acreage Available, writer-director Angus MacLachlan, who also penned the screenplay for Amy Adams’ breakout film Junebug, incorporates interesting characters into a film that doesn’t exactly know where it’s going. It’s good to see Polcanco, best known for playing Dayanara in Orange is the New Black, taking on different roles (she’s also in the new Peacock series Poker Face), and Strathairn, Weston, Pullen, and Camp all deliver reliable performances. But the real star here is Levy. The Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist actress extracts a depth of emotion from Tammy that feels like it goes far beyond what was on the page. A Little Prayer hovers around a trajectory but doesn’t quite get there, spending a few worthwhile moments with its conflicted main characters in the process. B
A Little Prayer is screening in the Premieres section at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics. Image courtesy of Sundance Institute.