Off the Map

REVIEW
Bo (de Angelis) was 12 years old in the summer of 1974, the summer of her dad Charley’s (Elliott) great depression. Her mom Arlene (Allen) and her dad’s best friend George (Simmons) arrange their lives around Charley’s profound need. Bo, while she loves her dad, has some profound needs of her own, felt with the immediacy and urgency of the almost-teenaged. The family lives on a few thousand dollars a year, bartering, trading, exploring the dump, shooting squirrels for dinner. There’s no phone, no electricity, no plumbing. Which makes their impending IRS audit such a hoot. William Gibbs (True-Frost), IRS auditor with one month on the job, arrives on foot after getting lost in the New Mexico desert and sleeping in his car for two days. Recently a Boston lawyer, the change of scene affects him most forcefully, revealing a few profound needs of his own. While the adults deal with their shared reality with one-step-at-a-time trepidation, Bo greets the world with an assurance only a preteen can muster. That summer lays the groundwork for the decade to come. With the help of Da Vinci’s notebooks and the harsh, elemental beauty of the New Mexico desert, this family formed by birth and happenstance support each other with unquestioned love and works of art. The ensemble is a director’s dream; there’s never a false note as Scott guides them through this vibrant dream meditation on the newly depressed and the always depressed, in which a bee sting induces a three-day delirium which changes the course of several lives. De Angelis as the young Bo more than holds her own with the thespian heavyweights surrounding her; she is the film’s narrator and its main protagonist. Off the Map is delightful and heartfelt, with more than enough strength to offset some minor flaws in narrative structure.