Thinner Blood
by Bethany Lewis
THINNER BLOOD is a short, intense film about the common bravery of two young sisters in the face of their abusive, neglectful, and alcoholic mother. Director Jon Reino excellently portrays the tragic mundaneness of the everyday pain of the more than 800,000 children who are abused daily, presenting in striking imagery the gritty realism of Olive (Hayla Yanes) and Ava’s (Nasya Smith) independent and fearful lifestyle. Simple acts, such as Olive pouring a bottle of vodka down the drain of a cluttered kitchen sink or walking alone through the city at night to buy her and her sister the dinner that their passed out mother neglected to prepare, surprise the viewer with how routine this life for them has become – as if they’ve never known anything else, as if they couldn’t hope to expect anything different. The routine and resigned nature with which the girls go about their everyday lives is perhaps the most striking and tragic thing about the film.
While most of the cinematography is technically proficient, visually striking, and emotionally affecting, there are some shots that take the viewer by surprise and seem out of place – either because of poor composition or low quality. The same is true for much of the writing. While some of the writing is natural enough and affecting in the right ways, there are some lines that have too many extra words or redundancies to flow well or to seem like something someone would actually say. For example, Olive tells her sister, “I’m going to get a drink from the kitchen.” Why she would need to say where she’s going to get the drink unless it was from anywhere besides the kitchen is unclear.
The stilted and unnatural quality of much of the acting doesn’t do the uneven writing any favors either. Hayla Hanes is a striking young actress with great maturity, a compelling personality and big, expressive, humorous eyes, but she has an unfortunate habit of delivering her lines as if she were in a 1950s after school special – there is an artificial and declarative quality to them. This is probably partly due to her age and inexperience (a simple enough thing to overcome with time and practice), but also partly due to the awkward quality of some of the dialogue. However, this same artificial quality is present in most of the other actors as well, which drastically takes away from the realism of the film and its story. Loretta (Miranda Freeman), the girls’ mother, is one of two actors mostly immune from this – and while her abusive yelling is cringingly convincing, her stage slaps are most cringingly not. The other actor, and possibly the most naturalistic and convincing of everyone involved, is Nasya Smith as Ava. She is mute for most of the film, which is tacitly understood to be a result of trauma associated with her ongoing abuse, and has but one line that tells a kindly neighbor of their mistreatment – but we feel delight when she is delighted and we fear for her when she is afraid, and that’s really one of the best things you can ask of a performance.
Make no mistake, this film is ambitious and heartfelt and passionate. It does some things very right and other things very wrong, but that doesn’t invalidate the project and its purpose in the least. It may be an uneven, sometimes rocky film – but for all that at least it tried and tried with an enthusiasm and passion not often seen.
