More than a tenth of families in the United States are living in poverty, and a lack of affordable housing means that long-term stays in cheap motels are common. Many of these residents also struggle with alcoholism — and Monica Stromdahl immerses us in the chaos of everyday life in one addiction-blighted family’s rented Portland room in her raw, intimately confronting feature debut Flophouse America. It screened in the Highlights section at Visions du Réel in Nyon after its awards special mention at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.
The Norwegian director photographed flophouses for twenty years since living in one herself as a student, before deciding to make a more involved, ongoing portrait of eleven-year-old Mikal. She filmed him over three years in the cramped, rundown space he shared with his heavy-drinking parents. The presence of Stromdahl’s camera inviting us into Mikal’s traumatic reality raises numerous ethical questions, which also clearly concerned her. In fact, she waited until he turned eighteen and could give his permission for the release of the film. Dedicated to “all the Mikals out there,” it is sensitively aimed at combating the shame and loneliness associated with his family situation, by allowing other youths experiencing similar situations to feel seen.
This gritty and suitably unvarnished doc, tempered with gentle empathy, of a family teetering on the brink of catastrophe is prefaced by Mikal at the later age of eighteen, reading off damning statistics about the number of American kids in such precarious homes. “I am one of them,” he declares straight to camera — a device to signal that ownership of his story has been returned to his hands, and to heighten the socio-political import of this portrait as representative of an American Dream that’s been derailed by government policies, and is unobtainable for so many.
Mikal, a skinny kid with an unruly mop of dark hair, calls his parents, Tonya and Jason, by their first names, a telling detail in a family dynamic where the roles of adults and children are not clearly delineated, and shift woozily depending on intoxication levels. At first, as they play Uno together, serve up leftover take-out for breakfast, and liberally declare shared affection, in perpetually horizontal, barely-out-of-bed states, the household’s set-up seems shambolic but fairly convivial. But the mood goes south when Mikal finds his pet cat covered in spilt vodka, and his father doesn’t return from a chicken-wing run in time for a scheduled shoe-buying trip, because he has stopped off at a bar. It’s clear this is a recurrent cycle, prodding Mikal’s emotional state to dip into listlessness and irritability, and a desperate urge to escape from the motel’s nondescript hallways and video games that are the only means for time out available to him.
“It’s not as bad as you think it is,” Mikal is told by his father, who has made a habit of invalidating his son’s legitimate frustrations as he acts as a go-between when tempers flare during Tonya’s soused, aggressive turns. Jason and Tonya have been together 24 years and their love for each other is unmistakable, but as they slur their words through these scenes of emotional manipulation, the miasma of co-dependency and enablement that hangs in the air positions our sympathies squarely with Mikal, who is often just trapped watching their antics skeptically. In a motel room with just a red drape curtain between the couch Mikal sleeps on and his parents’ bed, where the space is so cramped dishes are washed up in the bath, the claustrophobia is palpable, particularly as Stromdahl chooses to focus nearly exclusively on the trio at home. Stromdahl is out of the frame, and how she was able to squeeze into this pressure-cooker personal zone and shoot unobtrusively is remarkable.
Getting homework done in the unstructured havoc is a miracle, and Mikal’s grades are as unpredictable as his surroundings, ranging from an “A” to an “F” that fires up tensions. But, while the odds may be stacked against him for a successful future, the doc makes space with great care for his abilities and resilience (an evident deep trust travels both ways between subjects and director). In interludes, he recites spoken word poetry to camera, its words charting an inner journey from disintegration to hope. A shock turn of events, and its direct aftermath, is handled for the most part off-camera, with respectful restraint, and when we reconnect with the family ten months later, we find tragedy has become the impetus for potential healing and transformation.
Director, Cinematographer: Monica Stromdahl
Screenwriters: Monica Stromdahl, Siv Lamark
Editor: Siv Lamark
Producers: Beathe Hofseth, Siri Natvik
Sound: Mark Glynne
Music: Andreas Ihlebaek, Marius Troy
Production companies: Fri Film (Norway)
Sales: Lightdox
Venue: Visions du Reel (Highlights)
In English
78 minutes
