52 Films by Women Vol 9. 31. Blue Heron (Director: Sophy Romvari)
Blue Heron is a Canadian
film about responding to a family member with mental health needs exhibiting
troubling anti-social behaviour. It asks: could prolonged study resulting a
better understanding of the young person’s condition change their outcome? The
answer, based on the case history presented by writer-director Sophy Romvari, is,
‘no, it couldn’t’. The family is presented with an appalling choice by social
services that goes against every parenting instinct, that is, voluntary
placement with a foster family. ‘You’re taking my child away from me!’ declares
the mother (Iringó Réti). ‘How is this possible?’
The adolescent in question is Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), a tall James Spader-lookalike in a floppy yellow tee-shirt and large glasses. He is the mother’s eldest child. Her other three children, two boys and a girl, are kindergarten age. They play amongst themselves, rarely interacting with Jeremy.
Ostensibly the film is a reconstruction which shifts perspective in the second half. The film’s principal viewpoint character is Sasha, Jeremy’s much younger sister, played as a child by Eylul Guven and an adult by Amy Zimmer. The children are born to Hungarian emigres and live in a rural area. We watch them move into a property during the summer holidays.
‘Are you working?’ the mother asks her husband (Ádám Tompa) as he works on his computer in what appears to be the late 1990s; the large monitor and screen fonts are giveaways. One of Jeremy’s drawings notes the year ‘1996’. We rarely see the father taking Jeremy to task or even involve him any activities, except with his children. Jeremy and siblings are invited into the father’s dark to learn how to develop photographs. Jeremy (naturally) switches on the light, a reaction to red. ‘Rule number one, we don’t do that,’ the father says, switching it off. We see a photograph of Jeremy with a light placed under his chin, shining up at his face. In other scenes, his non-biological father films him and the other children with his mini-DV camera.
By the time we meet Jeremy, he is fully disengaged, as if the parents have already made every effort to address his feelings. Jeremy tests boundaries and cultivates indifference. He rarely speaks, except when he tells a young sibling, ‘I don’t want to see you eat’, pushing the plastic container of Fruit Loops across the breakfast table, which is then shoved back in his direction.
Pictured: Portrait of a mental health investigator as a young child. Young Sasha (Eylul Guven) in a scene from the Canadian film, 'Blue Heron', written and directed by Sophy Romvari. Still courtesy of Sophy Romvari/Locarno Film Festival
The Jeremy presented to us makes few attempts to socialise. In one scene, when the family visits the beach, he disappears. His mother gathers her three other children and drives away. On the way back, she stops at a gas station where Jeremy is having a conversation with an employee while holding a soft drink. His mother ushers him into the car.
On another day, Jeremy is arrested by police for shoplifting. He is brought home in handcuffs. A court appearance is scheduled. It is not the first time. Indeed, in an early scene, Jeremy acquires a souvenir key ring with a blue heron on it. He gives it to young Sasha in a rare moment of outreach.
Jeremy’s one skill is cartography. He draws pastiche maps, including one for ‘Fantasyville’. The maps seem to demarcate states or districts and show arterial roads. Some are pinned on the wall of his room. Unlike other teenagers, he shows no engagement with popular culture. In the lounge watching nature documentaries or cartoons with his young siblings – we hear Elmer Fudd on the soundtrack – he is listless. He doesn’t ask to change the channel, preferring his own thoughts. These we later learn are destructive. We are told that he keeps gasoline in his room and has threatened to burn the house down. That he steals money and was caught at aged fourteen selling fake drugs. That he hung around the wrong crowd.
We witness his anti-social behaviour, standing outside the house throwing a basketball against the wall and catching it while his non-biological father works inside. In one disturbing scene, he walks on the roof. His mother and sister come out of the kitchen where they are cooking a meal, his mother begging him to come down. We see a cheesy potato cake burning on a frying pan as Jeremy mutely stands his ground. Romvari cuts to Sasha in bed. The danger, we conclude, has passed. In another scene, the family receive a phone call from a neighbour telling them that Jeremy is lying outside the house pretending to be dead. ‘Don’t worry,’ mother replies, ‘he will get up and then he won’t be dead anymore’.
Romvari shows Sasha enjoying her childhood. The adult voiceover notes that she did not remember much of it and she was grateful for the prompts. In one scene, young Sasha plays with some local girls, who dance while playing hopscotch. ‘You have to dance,’ one of the girls explains. Sasha jumps onto the cover of a swimming pool. Water seeps through and soaks her clothes. An adult proffers a pole and hauls her to safety. On the way home, Sasha wrings her tee-shirt out. ‘Why are your clothes wet?’ her mother asks. ‘I ran through some sprinklers,’ Sasha replies.
Sasha has a strong relationship with her mother and asks to sleep in her parents’ bed. Her mother declares they will have a ‘ladies’ night’, telling father to sleep in Sasha’s cot. Sasha watches her mother peel potatoes and asks to try. We watch her struggle to use a scraper and worry about the sharp blade. Romvari cuts to cheese being grated. This kitchen scene is interrupted by Jeremy on the roof.
While father is looking after the children, mother visits a child psychologist. She plays father an audio tape of the conversation. ‘She allowed you to tape her?’ Father asks; we doubt that she did. The psychologist explains that a diagnosis might not be helpful. Mother quotes the phrase, ‘Opposition deficit disorder’, that is to say, Jeremy is compelled to defy authority. ‘Useless, right?’
During the fateful visit from social services, Romvari takes a leap forward in time to the adult Sasha preparing for a presentation, rehearsing greetings. She has assembled a group of specialists and presents Jeremy as a case history. What do they think? Romvari goes further, having adult Sasha visit the family as if she was from social services, travelling back through time to ask more questions about Jeremy. In one shot, adult Sasha watches her younger self Sasha as the latter is transfixed by television. We note that the adult and child resemble one another. The casting director did a terrific job.
There is one scene in which we are just shown Jeremy’s mother’s hands as
she is speaking. Her face is out of shot and the background is out of focus.
The mise-en-scene emphasises her difficulty discussing Jeremy, as if the
director didn’t want to intrude on her pain. In another scene, Jeremy’s mother
hears glass shattering. A window is broken. Jeremy has his slashed his wrist.
We learn that one of Jeremy’s childhood friends, Elijah, reached out to Sasha, having found her on Facebook. He describes Jeremy as kind. Jeremy had a bad childhood. His Hungarian accent didn’t help. ‘Kids were mean.’ His non-biological father explains that at aged six, Jeremy suddenly couldn’t catch. It was as if his eyes had crossed.
‘We are in crisis,’ mother explains, a phrase used more than once. We discover what happened – in a general sense – to Jeremy and why Elijah reached out.
Footage from wildlife documentaries underscore the point that we may know more about the behavioural traits of animals than of humans. Jeremy didn’t have the benefit of the internet to understand his own psychosis better; his non-biological father appeared to use the family’s own computer, when father isn’t showing Sasha how to draw with a computer mouse or using the computer to play music. The family’s digital footage and Sasha’s own documentary helps her to understand her family’s situation, but Jeremy remains an enigma, sometimes smiling, otherwise alone.
Reviewed at Screen Five, Picturehouse Central, Shaftesbury Avenue, Central London, Tuesday 14 October 2025, 09:40am, London Film Festival Press and Industry Screening
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