A heart-warming sci-fi comedy drama with an undertow of midlife melancholy, Linoleum has the makings of a sleeper cult classic. Young writer-director Colin West barely puts a foot wrong with just his second feature, deftly combining old-school American indie values with a twisty mystery plot, a sharp script and a polished technical package. After amassing positive festival reviews in the US, the film makes its international premiere in Oldenburg this week, with a slot at the BFI London Film Festival to follow in October. Strong word of mouth buzz, plus leading roles for relatable everyman stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan and Rhea Seehorn of Better Call Saul fame, should help boost box office prospects.
Set in small-town Ohio in a vaguely defined time period, Linoleum initially seems to invite viewers into a comfortingly familiar, lightly nostalgic, sanitised Spielberg-ian America. Cameron Edwin (Gaffigan) is a dorky suburban dad on the brink of 50 who once dreamed of being an astronaut but now hosts a cheerfully goofy Bill Nye-style science-for-kids TV show, filmed in his own garage. His wife Erin (Seehorn) works a humdrum job at the local Air and Space Museum, while their sassy misfit daughter Nora (Katelyn Nacon) attends a generic Midwestern high school, where she is inevitably finds herself in conflict with the cool mean-girl clique for her geeky, sexually ambivalent aura.
But there is weirdness on the edge of town, not least the vintage Corvette Stingray sports car that inexplicably plunges from the sky close to the Edwin family home. Even stranger, the driver turns out to be Kent Armstrong, a boorish former astronaut with an uncanny physical resemblance to Cameron (Gaffigan plays both roles). Not long afterwards, this mysteriously uninjured doppelgänger moves in next door with his teenage son Marc (Gabriel Rush), who begins a cautious flirtation with Nora. Bullied at home, he also gravitates towards Cameron as his alternative dad: “you’re like the version of him I wish he was,” Marc says.
Meanwhile, in another freak accident, a chunk of antique Apollo space junk falls from orbit and lands in the Edwin family’s garden, rendering their house off-limits as a special investigation scene. An enigmatic stranger (Elisabeth Hendry) also appears to be stalking Cameron, watching him from afar, while the creeping bewilderment of an elderly relative with dementia (Roger Hendricks Simon) leads Cameron to question his own shaky grasp on reality. Behind its warm Spielberg-ian sheen, Linoleum starts to feel more like a spiritual cousin to Richard Kelly’s reality-warping cult favourite Donnie Darko (2001) and Charlie Kaufman’s mournful meta-drama Synecdoche, New York (2008).
Linoleum is essentially a qualified celebration of family values and the American Dream, but West also shows the bitterness and pain below the idealised surface. Love has grown cold between the Edwins, who are quietly negotiating a dispiriting divorce, with Erin contemplating a move away and a fresh start. Depressed and confused, Cameron is about to lose his TV show, and increasingly haunted by middle-aged regrets about the more successful life he never got to live. In quiet desperation, he hatches a crazed scheme to build a home-made rocket and blast himself into space. An impossible dream, of course, but it does at least seem to re-enthuse Cameron and helps to pull his fractured family back together. Hey, it’s not rocket science. Except in rare cases like this, where it actually is.
After dropping clues for 90 minutes, West eventually provides a full explanation for all the disturbing hallucinations, uncanny echoes and Twilight Zone plot twists in Cameron’s life. The risk of spoilers is too high to reveal much more, but what begins as a surreal sci-fi mystery yarn ends up as an emotionally charged inner-space journey, a soulful paean to life-long love and human connection. Some viewers may feel a little ambushed by this heart-tugging finale, but Linoleum is so deftly assembled, cleverly choreographed and expertly acted, it pretty much earns its sentimental pay-off. Ed Wu’s cinematography, rich in lyrical lens flare and retro Kodachrome hues, strongly enhances the film’s hazy memory-palace aesthetic. Only Mark Hadley’s schmaltzy score strikes a jarring note, laying on the syrup a little too thickly.
Director, screenwriter: Colin West
Cast: Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seehorn, Katelyn Nacon, Gabriel Rush, Amy Hargreaves, West Duchovny, Elisabeth Henry, Roger Hendricks Simon,Tony Shalhoub
Producers: Chad Simpson, Dennis Masel, Chadd Harbold
Cinematography: Ed Wu
Production designer: Mollie Wartelle
Costume designer: July Rose White
Editor: Keara Burton
Music: Mark Hadley
Production companies: Brain Scratch Productions (US), Storm City Films (US), Subsequential (US)
World sales: United Talent Agency
Venue: Oldenburg International Film Festival
In English
101 minutes
