[yasr_overall_rating]
A young man with Tourette’s Syndrome embarks on a road trip with his recently-deceased mother’s ashes.
“The Road Within” is a truly exceptional movie. If ever there was an award for the most unlikely pairing of characters, this would win hands down. And that’s a good thing because this movie explores three vastly different characters, each suffering from three radically different disorders, tourette syndrome, anorexia and germophobia and puts all three in the same confined space with sometimes hilarious results. Having said that however, the movie never once makes light of their conditions, rather, it wisely adds some welcome humor to their ongoing situations, something that could have easily been bogged down by an amalgamation of excessive self-importance and unnecessary relevance.
Vincent’s (Robert Sheehan) mother, the most important person in his life, has just passed away, a result of alcoholism and when his estranged father, Robert (Robert Patrick), tries to step in to help, Vincent wants nothing to do with him. Robert is running for political office and not wanting Vincent on his campaign trail as he suffers from tourette syndrome, he decides to have him put into a specialty clinic that treats patients with a multitude of conditions. While there, he becomes roommates with Alex (Dev Patel), an OCD germaphobe who perpetually wears latex gloves and also becomes friends with Marie (Zoë Kravitz), a young woman suffering from anorexia.
Alex is used to being alone so he lets Vincent know, unsympathetically, that he doesn’t want him there but Vincent doesn’t care, he just wants to be left alone. As the two gradually learn to co-exist and designate to each other, their own personal space, Vincent becomes friends with Marie who one night, after having stolen the car keys from Mia (Kyra Sedgwick), one the clinic’s unconventional doctors, the trio head out on a road trip to California where Vincent plans to spread the ashes of his deceased mother into the ocean where she was the happiest. When Mia calls Robert, Vincent’s father, who is on the campaign trail, and informs him of the scenario, he decides to visit the clinic.
Furious that his son is causing him so much grief, instead of calling the cops whereby the chances of the incident could be televised and his name smeared in the press, both he and Mia decide to follow them in his car and with Mia having absolutely no idea as to where they could be headed, Robert remembers that Vincent wanted to go to California to spread his mother’s ashes and has a pretty good idea where their final destination will be. Road trip movies are a dime a dozen but none in recent memory have been so poignant and sentimental as “The Road Within.” On the journey, we don’t just get an understanding of what it’s like to suffer from tourette syndrome, anorexia and germophobia but also from Robert’s position as the father of a son who has tourettes.
The performances by all involved are revelatory and impassioned and director Gren Wells, in her feature film directorial debut, proves that she has the necessary chops required to tell not just a great story, but to keep the viewer absorbed and sympathetic, from the emotional opening scene of Vincent at his mother’s funeral, trying to keep his tourettes concealed, with nobody to lean on to the movie’s touching finale, which thankfully doesn’t veer into depressing and melancholic territory just for the sake of realism as there is enough heartbreak between the three lead characters and their lives already. Heartrending, provoking and at times, humorous, “The Road Wihin” is very highly recommended.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD July 7th
