Return

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Movie Details

• Genre: Drama
• Release Date: 2012-02-10 NY/LA
• Running Time: 98 min.
• Director: Liza Johnson
• Cast: Linda Cardellini, Michael Shannon, John Slattery, Talia Balsam, Emma Rayne Lyle, Paul Sparks, Louisa Krause, Rosie Benton, James Murtaugh, Rutanya Alda
• Writer: Liza Johnson
• Distributor: Dada Films
• Official Site: Return Official Site

Still wearing desert camo, Kelli (Linda Cardellini) comes back from a tour of duty in an unspecified country to the husband (Michael Shannon), the daughters, and the house in a small Ohio town that she left behind a year ago. Kelli has a tendency to shrug off questions about her frontline experience; when asked what it was like over there, her standard response is, "A lot of people had it a lot worse." Still, Kelli's old life doesn't quite fit anymore. "The cups are where the fuckin' plates should go," is how she explains her domestic disorientation to a girlfriend. Only surface cracks show at first, but with a little additional pressure, her life will soon shatter. After hitting her nadir, Kelli is court-ordered to an AA meeting where she meets a veteran of an unidentified past American adventure, Bud (John Slattery), who's curious about what it's like to come home in such touchy-feely times, with "all these Oprah assholes up your ass." Indeed, everyone is overeager to receive a breakthrough confessional from Kelli. But Return is not interested in catharsis in the pop-psych, flip-a-switch form. Writer-director Liza Johnson is concerned instead with the impact of protracted dislocation on a particular family, a dislocation attributable to a protracted war—that is, the micro within the macro. The avoidance of stereotypes, beginning with the unusual female perspective, keeps Return away from the most tired PTSD histrionics, but running away from one model leads Johnson's film right into the cliches of another: low-key indie naturalism.