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In Cannes, there\u2019s glitz and glamour. And then occasionally, there\u2019s the kind of ugly crying that ruins a good celebrity photo op. That\u2019s how it went when Tangles premiered at the festival on Thursday. The adaptation of Canadian author Sarah Leavitt\u2019s graphic novel, a memoir based on her experience losing her mother to Alzheimer\u2019s, had the theatre \u2014 the filmmaking team and the audience included \u2014 in a chorus of sobs.<\/p>\n
You might not expect that from an animated movie co-produced by Seth Rogen, but emotions were so overwhelming that director Leah Nelson and producer Lauren Miller Rogen (Seth\u2019s wife) could barely get through their attempts at thank you speeches during the film\u2019s standing ovation. Their words were being choked back by tears.<\/p>\n
I was turned to mush too by the film\u2019s gentle passage through a harrowing experience, and the way the animation uses light and dark to capture emotions. So many scenes only illuminate narrow swaths, illustrating how this experience makes you feel lost in the shadows. The movie also reminded me that there\u2019s a Sarah McLachlan song for every kind of mush you\u2019re going through \u2014 her 2003 track Answer playing the heartstrings this time around. But what made Tangles hit even harder were the dedications after the credits \u2014 to grandma, or dad, or to someone identified only by a loving pet name \u2014 from the numerous cast and crew who had someone in their lives affected by dementia.<\/p>\n
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Sugar Lyn Beard, Samira Wiley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Seth Rogen and Abbi Jacobson at Cannes promoting their new film “Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me” (Photo: Olivier Chassignole) (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe film is a love letter to caregivers and families who have been through this, or something like this,\u201d says Nelson, in an interview in Cannes earlier that morning. \u201cAnd I knew, all the way along in making this movie, people have a touchpoint to Alzheimer’s or dementia. And we talked about that a lot during the making of the film. People shared their personal stories. So it was something I really wanted to do to honour those people that we’ve lost to this cruel, horrible disease, and put their names there so that we could remember them.<\/p>\n
Those dedications are also a beautiful parting note, speaking to the film\u2019s juggling act, balancing handmade specificity with universality.<\/p>\n
Tangles is a version of Leavitt\u2019s story, with Abbi Jacobson voicing the queer author as the aspiring cartoonist at a San Francisco alt-weekly in the 90s. She travels back-and-forth between her job and her conservative hometown in Maine as her mother, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, is diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s, and her father (Bryan Cranston) struggles to accept this new reality.<\/p>\n
In real life, Leavitt moved to Vancouver from Fredericton. Her story is being adapted by Nelson, a fellow Vancouverite, and produced by Miller Rogen alongside her husband Seth (also a Vancouverite). All three have varying degrees of experience with these ordeals. Lauren\u2019s mother Adele was diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s right around the time that she started dating Seth Rogen. That \u2019s the impetus behind Hilarity for Charity, their foundation raising funds and awareness to support caregivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that’s why we partnered on the movie together,\u201d says Nelson. \u201cLauren was there through the process to talk through these scenes that we were creating, and give her personal experience to see if this was authentic, or if this felt right, if it was hitting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of discussing with my collaborators about what had happened to them, and what do they remember from a grandparent, for instance. And they had to go back and think back to a loved one going through that. And so we would take those little stories and craft scenes out of that. A lot of that is in the film.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all put ourselves into the movie in a way and made it personal. And I’ll speak for the artists that worked at the animation too. A lot of people who drew these images and made the animation and the design had those connections as well. They put all that heart into what they were doing. I think we’re all in there a little bit, and I hope when people see the film, that they can find those touch points, and they can see themselves in the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I ask both Nelson, and Miller Rogen, in separate interviews, to single out a specific frame from Leavitt\u2019s book that resonates most with their own experience, they both point to the moment in the doctor\u2019s office, when the family receives the Alzheimer\u2019s diagnosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe illustrated this crumbling Earth beneath their feet,\u201d says Nelson, adding that the image became the guiding light for how to use visuals throughout the film. \u201cIt was really simple, just lines and dots, but it communicated that that’s what it felt like in that moment, that the Earth was crumbling beneath them. So that was the image that I saw and said this film needs to be about what it felt like for her, not what just what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tangles also boasts a star-studded voice cast that keeps the narrative animated. On top of Jacobson, Louis-Dreyfuss and Cranston, there\u2019s Beanie Feldstein, Sarah Silverman, Bowen Yang and former YTV host Sugar Lyn Beard.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s Seth Rogen, playing a version of who he was when Miller Rogen\u2019s mom was diagnosed; someone outside all the heaviness, bringing some much-needed levity. However, instead of being a comedian, Rogen\u2019s character is a wannabe musician.<\/p>\n
Rogen never sang in real life. His attempts at hitting a digestible note in the film are both funny and comforting, a welcome dose of humour in a narrative that leans on those moments as some lightness through all that\u2019s dark.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat mix of comedy and drama,\u201d says Rogen, in a separate conversation, \u201cthat\u2019s what\u2019s exciting; to make people laugh in a movie where you wouldn\u2019t expect that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 6 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-682550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}