SNAPSHOTS: Love, Loss and Longing Across Three Generations

If you like Jane The Virgin as much as I do, then Snapshots could be just what you need to tide you over until the final season. Directed by Melanie Mayron, who plays Jane’s writing professor Marlene Donaldson, the film also features Brett Dier, known to JTV fans as Michael, (arguably) Jane’s one true love. If that wasn’t enough, Snapshots actress Emily Baldoni is married to Justin Baldoni, who stars as Rafael, Jane’s other one true love!

Although that’s ostensibly where the similarities end, both the movie and the TV show have common themes: acceptance, family, what it really means to keep a secret. Snapshots, in particular, is full of secrets…

Snapshots

Allison (Emily Baldoni) and her mother Patty (Brooke Adams) decide to spend the weekend with Patty’s mom, Rose (Piper Laurie). Relations between Allison and Patty are fraught, and Allison is keeping a secret that is destined to make them even more so.

She’s not the only one. Finding an old camera of her grandmother’s, Allison decides to get the film inside developed, and then gift the photos to Rose. Looking at the snapshots ignites a host of memories for Rose, some painful, some beautiful, about the romance she had with Louise (Emily Goss) during the first half of the 1960’s.  Despite having occurred a half-century earlier, the discovery has a profound effect on the whole family.

Earning Its Clichés

Taken out of context, much of the dialogue here could elicit eye-rolls. Within the space of ten minutes, Rose has entreated her granddaughter to “Live your life, no matter what the cost”, and “Follow your heart, that’s your north star”. Conversations between Rose and Louise are full ardent exclamations like “We can’t do this!” and “We’ve got to stop!”. It seems that Snapshots is always at risk of slipping into cliché territory.

But it doesn’t. Or rather it does, but it earns the right to use those clichés. Mayron‘s film is so heartfelt that even when the dialogue gets a little clunky, it never ever feels trite. A lot of this is due to Snapshots being a true story; the character of Rose is based on screenwriter Jan Miller Corran’s mother. Hackneyed dialogue aside, it’s eminently clear how much it means to Corran, Mayron, and the exceptional cast to be able to tell this story.

Anyway, alongside those clichés are plenty more characterful lines. My favourite comes when Allison is about to reveal a secret to her grandmother, near the end of the movie. “I don’t want to freak you out”, warns the younger woman, and Rose replies, “I’m too old to be freaked out”. It’s a simple statement, but coming after all we have seen, it carries a quiet profundity.

Snapshots boasts a slate of stellar actresses, headed by Piper Laurie in a stately, steely turn. As Rose she is equal parts warm and fierce; her experiences from her younger days making her far more progressive than most eighty-somethings. It’s easy to see why Allison loves her so. Talking of Allison, Emily Baldoni is another standout. Allison has more here to deal with than anyone, and Baldoni illuminates that emotional journey with a lively humour. There’s not a weak link in the cast however, and perhaps the biggest pleasure of Snapshots is watching all the vibrant women interact.

Woman Telling Their Own Stories

Snapshots is directed by a woman, written by women, and stars women. It’s a film that lets women tell their own stories. That’s what makes it so affecting.

Whilst it’s far from rare to have a movie that pushes women to the periphery, it’s extremely rare to find one that does the same to men. The only pertinent male roles here are the husbands of Louise and Young Rose (Shannon Collis), played in flashback by Brett Dier and Max Adler. Dier does get one meaty scene (and he is very good in it), but everything else here belongs to the women. Snapshots is all the better for it.

Allison, Patty, Rose and Louise are all fully realised, three-dimensional women. They all have their own problems, dreams and interests. Laurie, Baldoni and Adams have an easy rapport, and evoke a convincing shared history. Many of Snapshots best moments come when they are just hanging out, like when they are playing Scrabble with Rose’s neighbour, Marybeth (Cathy DeBuono).

A Few More Flaws

After Marybeth has left though, there is an awkward scene where you can almost hear the gears of the plot cranking. For most of Snapshots, Rose keeps her youthful romance with Louise a secret. To add some drama to this secret-keeping, it means that Allison or Patty is going to have to be homophobic, otherwise Rose could come straight out and say it. And so Marybeth, who is in the film for the three minutes it takes to do her duty as a plot device, is made ‘butch’, just so Patty can ‘disapprove’ of her. It’s a clumsy moment, which only serves as a way of dragging the movie from the second to the third act.

There are other major flaws here too. Aesthetically, Snapshots often resembles a Hallmark movie. It’s bland to look at; too crisp, too clean, too lacking in innovation. There’s an overabundance of overhead shots of the lake by the house where the three women are spending the weekend. The score, by David Michael Frank, is also Hallmark-esque. It’s all a bit twee and twinkly, and deployed in moments where silence would be more effective.

In Conclusion

Snapshots is far from a perfect film. The dialogue is too heavy on the platitudes, the plot mechanics can be clunky and obvious, and it has far too much aesthetically in common with a Hallmark movie.

And yet some how, none of those considerable problems seems to matter that much. It’s certainly a help that the cast, Piper Laurie in particular, are so good. More than anything though, it’s because Snapshots is made with such an admirable degree of earnestness, with so much feeling, that it is easy to overlook the flaws.

Despite having the trappings of a TV movie, Snapshots hits on something real. I enjoyed it immensely.

Have you seen Snapshots? What did you think? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Snapshots was released in the US on August 14, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.