C’mon C’mon

C’mon C’mon, the fourth feature by Mike Mills, represents his most successful film yet, whose often colorfully quirky films and eccentric films have often proved to be overly precious and over directed. Returning to themes about family, identity, and relationships where characters often attempt to find their purpose in the world, Mills’ work can often use more dramatic potency, but it is often absorbing and charming, and that always satisfies. With Joaquin Phoenix in his first role since his Oscar-winning performance in Joker (2019, distributor A24 should have no trouble finding a growing audience for the film.

Like in his previous endeavors like Beginners and 20th Century Women, which are both personal films, Mills once again serves as writer-director himself. Without sacrificing his artful sensibilities or narrative flow, Mills has successfully tamed down his overly quirky sensibilities and honed in on a deeply touching and gentle film that feels every bit as resonant as his last two features without sacrificing his artful sensibilities. The film still retains his art-house sensibilities and idiosyncratic approaches while still bringing nuances to his characters.

In his first film in five years, C’mon, C’mon, carries on some of the same themes about parenthood that were found in 20th Century Women (2016) and even Beginners (2011). Where 20th Century Women was a tribute to Mills’ own mother (who was played wonderfully by Annette Benning), and Beginners was a tribute to his father (which led to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the late Christopher Plummer), C’mon, C’mon also deals with parenting, but this time done with even more sincerity. This time it’s about uncles and nephews, in which Phoenix plays Johnny, a middle-aged radio journalist who travels around the country interviewing children for a radio special on how children see their future. Jonny is single and alone, once engaged to someone who isn’t a father. He agrees to help his sister Viv (Gaby Hoffman) out by watching over her 9-year-old, Jesse (Woody Norman, in one of the most impressive child performances you will ever see). It’s a transfixing performance for both of them, but their encounter never feels cloying, overly cutesy, or forced. In fact, it ends up becoming complex, layered, and finally radiant as you can sense that Mills loves his characters and understands the human experience.

Eventually, Johnny turns his boom and mic on Jesse, asking him questions about life and the future just as he does with his previous subjects–though he’s very reluctant and shy about it at first. This is going to take some effort on Johnny’s part to earn Jesse’s confidence and truth to get some answers from the kid. Jesse isn’t a shy kid; it just requires a lot of work to get him out of his routine. Even Viv, who talks to Johnny on the phone, informs him that he can be a chore to work with, but she advises Johnny to be honest and receptive with him.

Viv also informs Johnny that she has raised him in a very peculiar way—he pretends to be an abandoned orphan, who is in need of food and shelter. What’s ironic about this is that you would think it would feel overly quirky, and Mills has often directed quirky films, but Mills handles this eccentricity with earned pathos and honesty. The exchanges between Johnny and Jesse are so absorbing that some of their moments also hold some dramatic thrusts as Johnny begins to realize young Jesse has a lot of built-in anger repressed inside.

There are many other tender moments in the film where Jesse ends up taking an interest in his uncle’s work as he picks up the shotgun mic, or a simple moment of Johnny taking Jesse out in the city of New York to record some ambient sounds in the cities and parks. Their dynamic delivers some sweetness and complexity that achieves some melancholy poignancy despite never igniting all the dramatic engines. It’s restrained work in which Phoenix is at his most subdued, since the 2014 film Her helps bring delicateness to the material. This restraint is also reserved thanks to the ravishing black and white cinematography by Robbie Ryan, whose handsome widescreen cinematography of New York City echoes the work of Gordon Willis’s cinematography in Woody Allen’s 1979 masterpiece Manhattan. Aaron Dressner and Bryce Dressner’s woozy score also brings an ethereal aura to the film that brings out the emotion that never feels sentimental or syrupy.