1 week ago
5
For the final 20 or so minutes of an early screening of Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson‘s Berlin-bound “Mouse” that I recently attended, the woman sitting behind me in one of NYC’s smallest screening rooms sobbed. Like, really sobbed. I could hear her gasps in between her cries. Yes, I thought to myself, one of my people.
While I’m not sure there’s yet a cult assembled around the deeply empathetic and uniquely humane cinema of O’Sullivan and Thompson (partners in both film and life), God willing, there will be after more audiences see the pair’s third effort. I’ve been banging the drum on their wondrous output since 2020’s “Saint Frances” (which Thompson directed and O’Sullivan wrote and starred in) and their deep-feeling follow-up, 2024’s “Ghostlight” (written by O’Sullivan, who also joined Thompson in co-directing duties). Around these parts, any O’Sullivan and Thompson joint is an event.
“Mouse” is no exception, and their best effort yet.
As is typically the case with the pair’s films, its logline does not quite do it justice. “Saint Frances” was about a disaffected nanny who bonds with her young charge. “Ghostlight” followed a fractured family as they found unexpected healing in live theater. “Mouse” is about a shy high school senior looking for ballast after the sudden end of her lifelong BFF-ship. These are all “small” stories, but they are also crucially about people, and thus contain the wild multitudes of humanity itself.
O’Sullivan and Thompson reunite with their “Ghostlight” star, Katherine Mallen Kupferer (whose own parents starred alongside her in the previous feature), who is cast here as our titular Mouse. Well, sort of. Her name is Minnie, but her shyness leans toward the mousy, though no one would ever say that to her, least of all her beloved and extremely outgoing best friend, Callie (Chloe Coleman). But when Minnie’s itchy nickname is (wrongly, it turns out) attributed to the flashy Callie, it’s hard for her to shake its deeper meanings.
When the film opens, Minnie and Callie are wrapping their final day as high school juniors in the early summer of 2002 (cue the Michelle Branch soundtrack, perfect). The stage is being set for their senior year — and, quite literally, for the very talented Callie’s next big high school musical moment and her eventual plans to attend Juilliard — and it’s obvious that they’re not about to have the same experience. Callie is popular and vivacious, perpetually surrounded by admirers and various hangers-on (Audrey Grace Marshall’s Cara is hellbent on usurping Minnie’s place in Callie’s life, while her himbo-esque boyfriend Brad is given wonderful dimension through Beck Nolan’s sneaky-good performance).
Minnie? She’s much more reserved, orbiting around Callie and company, not quite ever the star of her own show. But this is not a story about two best friends who break up because of the vagaries of popularity, and Coleman’s Callie is not a villain who breaks Minnie’s delicate heart. Well, not on purpose.
It’s clear that Minnie is out of touch with lots about her life — though not her affection for Callie — including her own sexuality (Iman Vellani as cute local video store clerk Kat happily cracks through that) and her fraught relationship with her overworked mother (Mallen Kupferer’s own mom and “Ghostlight” co-star, Tara Mallen). Callie’s friendship and trust are the best things in her life. Her nice house with a fully stocked kitchen is a bonus, as is Callie’s very-put-together mom Helen (a heartbreaking Sophie Okonedo), who wisely seems to like the steady Minnie a whole heck of a lot more than the rest of Callie’s coterie.
That will prove to be the one saving grace of what comes next. When Minnie and Callie’s friendship comes to a sudden end, it’s only through bonding with Helen that Minnie finds any sort of ballast in her life. But as point-A-to-point-B as that might sound, O’Sullivan and Thompson remain uniquely attuned to the ebbs and flows of real life and how real people respond to it. Mallen Kupferer, so outspoken in “Ghostlight” and so wonderfully goofy in “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” here sinks into the far harder-to-crack Minnie. That’s not to say that Minnie isn’t prone to the emotional wilds of any teenage girl, but the young actress’ finely tuned performance is never broad or silly.
Instead, we get to know Minnie during one of the worst times of her life. So too does Helen, who handles her own feelings about Callie through her own coping mechanisms, some of which work, most of which don’t, and many of which center on building her own friendship with Minnie. The pair of them has a lot in common beyond Callie, including a general sense of wisdom beyond their years that has not always been beneficial to them.
Early in the film, Cara insists that Callie’s group of friends (including both Cara and Minnie) partake in a horrific little parlor game she likens to “Personal Feedback.” Mostly, it’s an excuse for the teenagers to say terrible things about each other under the guise of honesty and friendship. Even our golden girl, Callie, doesn’t escape unharmed, though Minnie almost does, because Cara simply can’t be bothered to remember she exists.
“Mouse” is, at its heart, a wonderful rebuttal to just that sort of cruel thinking — for all the Minnies out there — and a reminder that everyone matters and everyone deserves to be seen. Lofty as that might sound, it’s one of the most basic tenets of humanity, and the kind of thing too often forgotten on the big screen. O’Sullivan and Thompson never forget, however, and their films reflect exactly that. Our only request: more, please, our people need this.
Grade: A-
“Mouse” premiered at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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