Since playing confused teen Lindsay Weir on Freaks and Geeks, Linda Cardellini has been a delight to watch, an unforced actress with heart, shyness and endearing grit; an Everywoman with an edge. Liza Taylor's Return (2011), a familiar story with a gender twist, gives her an uncommonly meaty role.Kelli (Linda Cardellini) returns from National Guard service overseas and attempts to restart her life. Things don't go smoothly: Kelli drifts apart from her husband Mike (Michael Shannon), struggles to connect with her kids, drinks heavily and leaves work. Eventually her marriage crumbles, Kelli's arrested for DUI and attends a therapy group that doesn't help. She forms a friendship with fellow veteran Bud (John Slattery) and struggles to piece her life back together, until she's called
Like all returning vet sagas, Return owes a debt to The Best Years of Our Lives, casting its heroine adrift in a civilian life she barely remembers. Taylor's script follows familiar beats, yet mostly avoids melodramatic trappings. Kelli doesn't have a big meltdown or despair-driven epiphany, no triggering incident or traumatic flashbacks, with her disconnect more gradual, subtle than we're expecting. Thus Return scores over similar movies like The Hurt Locker, which can only paint PTSD in broad, stereotypical strokes.
From her earliest scenes, Kelli seems disconnected: she constantly compares her mundane life to Army service, resists her husband's flirtations, and starts drinking and partying whenever an opportunity arises. Eventually she's reduced to laying on the couch watching television, adrift in malaise and depression that nothing can penetrate. Taylor emphasizes her isolation in long shots and ambient noise, whether it's constantly-blaring television and radio wallah, popcorn popping during a love scene, or the bookends at an airport. Even in therapy, she doesn't find any meaningful connection, just a fleeting affair with Bud that offers only momentary release.
Thus Return isn't dramatically satisfying: there's no melodramatic denouement, no revelation about her service beyond vague assurances that "others had it far worse," nothing that causes Kelli to turn her life around and face her fears. She dyes her hair and embraces momentary happiness with her children, but even so there's redeployment looming over her head, puncturing her one happy moment with despair. The best she can hope for is normalcy, not happiness; and her service obligations render this impossible.
Linda Cardellini jettisons her usual panache, instead playing Kelli as downbeat, depressed, never entirely there despite feigned familiarity, coarse jokes and frantic tries at course correction. Her Kelli is never less than believable, with Cardellini opting for quiet humanity over broad gestures. Michael Shannon is equally subdued; far from the creeps and villains he usually plays, Shannon scores as a decent man (despite his extramarital affair) unable to cope with his wife's problems. John Slattery's role amounts to an extended cameo, injecting some momentary humor into the glum proceedings.
Ms. Cardellini's career is regrettably mixed: memorable TV gigs on E.R. and Mad Men (and voice over work in Groggy favorite Gravity Falls), but forgettable films: recent roles include bit parts in Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Founder, and a lame Will Ferrell comedy. Here's hoping more directors follow Liza Taylor's lead and give her more interesting parts.
