We’re Still Together

Chris (Jesse Camacho) is a morbidly obese teen experiencing a living hell, regularly assaulted by bullies and locked into a mercurial relationship with his offscreen mother, who apparently bans him from coming home after a quarrel. On one such day of violence and aimless wandering through his hometown of Montreal, Chris is beaten by two thugs who frequently attack him. “Just do what you’re going to do,” he tells them, hoping to survive so he can go home when mom cools off. Enter Bobby (Joey Klein), a 30-ish loner who steps out of his car and rescues Chris, punishing the punks with equal amounts of pain and peculiar, life-coach-like rhetoric. Afterward, Bobby—who looks like he jumped from the pages of a Jack Kerouac novel—takes Chris under his wing for a night of misadventure and madness. A dangerously grandiose figure who probably should be on medication, Bobby is the type of guy who takes over every room he enters or every situation involving his estranged family (or Chris) as something that he needs to master, challenge, or soak with self-pity. Yet it’s hard not to see the good in Bobby, especially in his paternal (if overwhelming) kinship with miserable Chris. Writer-director Jesse Klein (brother of Joey) has taken a classic trope—an endless car ride—and infused it with a spirit of chaos and darkness that is cracked by the characters’ sincere, if sometimes misplaced, efforts at grasping love. Recommended. (T. Keogh)