The Accident

Film festival movies often try and take the mundane and blow it up big, sometimes just literally by putting small stories on the big screen. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always translates to Tubi computer watching. I’d like the ideal way to see this movie. But as that’s unavailable, all I have is the movie the way I did view it. And viewing The Accident the way I did was a middling experience.

Avid biker Jo gets into a standoff with a car driven by a woman with her teenage son in the passenger seat. The car fully hits Jo and drives several meters with Jo on the hood. Afterwards, Jo’s partner, Cecilia encourages Jo to report the incident, especially seeing as Jo is pregnant. Having photographed the license plate, the couple track down the car’s owner, Cleber. Cleber tells them the car was driver by his ex-wife, Elaine. He wants Jo to testify at a custody hearing so Cleber can get full custody of their son, Maicon. Jo feels conflicted about this ask. So, she begins to spend time with the family and especially Maicon and becomes sucked into their personal family drama.

The Accident falls into the category of: diversity win! These lesbians are boring. There is nothing remotely threatening or really, interesting about Jo and Cecilia. They are a functional but dull long term couple with very regular wants and plans. This contrasts Maicon and his parents, who are divorced and high on the drama. Almost all of the conflict here is external forces. A film about Jo and Cecilia outside of this incident would likely have no hook or conflict or anything to warrant 94 minutes of runtime.

This is likely the point of The Accident. As Cecilia and Jo await the birth of their own first child, they see a great example of what not to do. Over and over again, Jo proves herself a better parent simply by being a better person. It takes very few interactions before Maicon expresses envy for Jo’s unborn child, as the child will have much better parents than he. And of course, there is something to celebrate here with this depiction. Maicon’s envy at a family having two mothers is a huge step forward for the public perception of same-sex couples. Likewise, the fact that The Accident does directly compare a dysfunctional straight couple and functional but dull lesbian couple suggests continued progress in how people perceive non-traditional families.

While there is something to be celebrated in the normalizing of this lesbian couple, The Accident does feel too normal. I spent the whole film waiting for the other shoe to drop. The story is far more straight-forward than I expected and not exactly melodramatic. Instead of really swinging for the fences, The Accident focused more on creating a sort of realism. This is where I think the film suffered in how I viewed it. Perhaps in the isolated but exaggerated atmosphere of a movie theatre, this slice of realism would’ve worked. But not watching it in such an environment just meant I looked at the movie on my computer screen and thought it was sort of dull and occasionally failed to hold my attention.

Instead of going for big moments, The Accident presents a subtler, more real look at some nice, boring lesbians, a messy pair of heterosexuals and a disaffected teen who could really use some kindness. This is not a bad film by any means and it sure isn’t badly made. But as it can veer into the dull side of subtle, there’s a cap to how much I can applaud all the things it does quietly right.

Overall rating: 5.7/10

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