Welcome to the Rileys
Sometimes a plot’s most important event happens before the story even begins. Such is the case with the Rileys, an archetypal American couple living in Indianapolis. We meet the Rileys several years after their daughter has died in a car crash. Despite the elapsed time, the couple is still possessed by the loss.
This is because the Rileys have no way to define their grief. As reticent Midwesterners, they rely on social norms to determine how to live their lives. However, their lives defy conventional categories. When a child’s parents die, that child is put into an orphanage and, ideally, adopted. But for the parents of a dead child, there is no ritualized progression to solve the issue. We don’t even have a word, like the word “orphan,” to describe the unfortunate people that survive their progeny.
Without any cultural custom to refer to, the Rileys pioneer their bereavements alone. They refuse to discuss their problem. Lois Riley (Melissa Leo) is crippled by anxiety and cannot leave the house. Doug Riley (James Gandolfini), unable to face his wife, becomes deeply involved in an affair with a waitress.
Then, in the first five minutes of the movie, the waitress suddenly dies of a heart attack. This may seem like a lot of action for so little celluloid, but the pacing of the movie is hardly rushed. From the very hectic beginning, a series of gradual consequences untangle for the next 100 minutes.
Just as Doug Riley does not know how to be a childless father, he struggles to create a ceremony for the loss of his mistress of five years. Not a traditional widower, he wanders around the graveyard in a dark suit that no one can see him wear. Because “it’s something people do,” he had purchased his own headstone to put alongside his daughter’s. But when he comes across his own name on a grave marker while mourning the death of his beloved mistress, something snaps.
Doug then disappears into a New Orleans business trip, telling Lois that he does not know when he’ll be able to come back. In his wanderings, Doug finds himself in the back room of strip club with Mallory (Kristen Stewart), a 16-year-old orphan whose life really, really sucks. Taking her as a surrogate for his daughter, Doug does his best to rescue Mallory.
Kristen Stewart’s role is the headline of this movie. Because she is also in the Twilight movies, her choice to portray a stripper with bad skin is probably what you’ll hear about Welcome to the Rileys, if you hear anything at all. However, she brings more to the part than rebellion against being pigeon-holed as a teenybopper starlet. She has genuine edge. Her sexuality isn’t forced. She captures the irritating stubbornness of a teenage girl expertly while allowing us to still feel sympathy for her.
Stewart is in the privileged class of actors that gets all the money from a tween-oriented franchise, but none of the Disney sub-clauses. That is to say, no entertainment executive seems to be telling her to sing at a Jonas Brothers concert. Daniel Radcliffe has a similar freedom from his role as Harry Potter, which allowed him to show his wand* onstage during Equus. It looks like Welcome to the Rileys will not garner any commercial success, but it will certainly be a feather in Stewart’s indie-cred cap, which I believe she deserves.
Despite its specific American setting, the film actually utilizes very European cinematic themes that have also been adopted in Latin America. Like the protagonists in a great deal of European movies, the Rileys are starkly realistic characters (not larger than life) that are faced with an enormous personal challenge (not a struggle to save the government/Earth). Then, like a great deal of European and Latin American movies, the Rileys deal with their problems by taking a roadtrip to a new setting. In this case it is New Orleans instead of a Mediterranean backdrop. Also, unlike most American movies, there’s hardly any soundtrack. Also: no vampires.
Overall, Welcome to the Rileys is powerful. The film moves through measurable chapters, but its tensions are subtle. The plot is single-minded: a man seeks to replace his dead daughter with a troubled teenager. However, this single thrust has multitudes within it. The stakes are high, but it is difficult to determine what Doug Riley is trying to accomplish. His attempt to repair something he doesn’t understand raises haunting questions for the audience.
When a conventional life is no longer possible, where will our instincts take us? If your family were destroyed, what would grow on the structure that remained?
*by which I mean penis
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