''Flesh and Blood'' is a 2017 American drama film written by, directed by and starring Mark Webber. The film debuted at

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...

on March 11, 2017.

Plot summary

Mark, who has recently been released from prison, struggles with staying clean while living with his mother and half-brother. He begins to work through the trauma of his past.

Cast

Madeline Brewer Madeline Kathryn Brewer (born May 1, 1992) is an American actress. She is known for her role as Tricia Miller in the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards, Emmy award-winning series ''Orange Is the New Black'' (2013), her role in ''Hemlock Grove (TV series ...

as Maddy * Mark Webber as Mark *

Cheri Honkala Cheri Lynn Honkala (; born January 12, 1963) is an American anti-poverty advocate, co-founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) and co-founder and National Coordinator of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. She has been ...

as Cheri *Guillermo Santos as Guillermo *Rocco Rosanio as Rocco

Production

Webber cast his own mother and half-brother to play the parts of the protagonist Mark's mother and half-brother in a fictionalized rendering of his early life. Honkala plays herself—a community activist who was the Green Party's 2012 vice-presidential nominee.

Critical reception

A mixed review in '' Variety'' praised the cinematography by Patrice Lucien Cochet but "That there’s an authenticity to the results may be unsurprising, but it’s still impressively packaged into an atmospheric, technically well-crafted whole. On the downside, it’s also no surprise that the weakest aspect here is a somewhat half-hearted attempt to impose dramatic structure on the more anecdotal, personality-driven stuff of life itself." Keith Watson of ''

Slant Magazine ''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...

'' reviewed the film more favorably, and, while noting some negative aspects, wrote, "The director's style may be all prose, no poetry, but his stripped-down approach nevertheless renders these messy, unglamorous lives with an abiding sense of dignity." The film was negatively reviewed by Jeanette Catsoulis for the '' New York Times''. "A dreary pileup of hard-luck monologues and run-down locations, Mark Webber’s “Flesh and Blood” straddles the line between fact and fiction with exhausting earnestness and a fatal dearth of narrative." Again praising Cochet’s "warm cinematography", Catsoulis summarized the film as "too much like an act of therapeutic cleansing to engage much beyond those involved in its making."

References

External links

* * {{rotten-tomatoes, flesh_and_blood_2017 American drama films 2010s English-language films Films directed by Mark Webber 2010s American films