Tangles ★★★

The nostalgic flair ingrained in the black-and-white images of Leah Nelson‘s animated debut feature gradually turns bitter as the disease at the center of the biographical story progresses until neither the protagonists nor the viewers can pretend any longer it wasn’t that bad. “Today wasn’t that bad” is just what twenty-something part-time illustrator and receptionist Sarah (Abbi Jacobson) tells her new girlfriend Donimo (Samira Wiley) as well as herself after their first day visiting her parents in their home in rural Maine. But they both noticed what Sarah’s optimistic father Rob (Bryan Cranston) and straight sister Hannah (Beanie Feldstein) all know: “There’s something wrong with my mother’s brain.”

Alzheimer’s disease is gradually erasing the vibrant, bright parent who supported Sarah when she came out as gay in the early nineties – a time much more intolerant than many like to remember – and was someone she could always turn to for advice. In her autobiographical graphic memoir “Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me,” Sarah Leavitt comes to terms with the gradual loss of a loved one and the reversal of caretaking roles in a family. In her bittersweet adaptation of Leavitt’s memoir, co-written with the author herself and bolstered by an exceptional voice cast, Nelson follows the titular embroiled emotions and inextricable interrelations in families. 

Starting out on a light note, the plot draws the audience into Sarah’s busy San Francisco routine of juggling two jobs – the one that pays her rent and the one that she loves, illustrating for an alternative queer zine – political activism, and hanging out at lesbian clubs. It‘s at one of these she meets beyond-cool motorcyclist Donimo, with whom she falls madly in love. She even invites Donimo to accompany her on one of her regular visits back home. Only when there and meeting her curiously absent-minded mother Midge (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who suddenly struggles to open a door and seems unusually agitated, does Sarah realize that something is wrong.

At first, no one wants to talk to her about what’s going on and her father is literally running away from the truth, taking Midge on a spontaneous Mexico trip which Sarah and Donimo join. Improvements are momentary and fragile, however, and the inevitable diagnosis shatters everyone’s world in different ways. Sarah finds herself torn between her own life in San Francisco and the growing responsibility of helping her family cope. Increasingly strained family relationships expose the treacherous effects of an illness that aggravates old tensions while creating new ones. Building upon the key motive of affected memory, Nelson explores how time, emotions, and subjectivity distort past events. 

Though slightly sleeker and without the tiny individual imperfections of the graphic novel, the animations are remarkably close to the source. With its understated retro-charm, Leavitt’s 2D-style pairs perfectly with the low-key self-deprecating humor and touches of surreal sarcasm. As the story and with it Midge’s condition progresses, the animations externalize mental states in fantastic vignettes that lighten the depressing situation with their dreamlike feel. Conversely, nightmares seem to encroach upon daily life as the family home transforms into a strange space for Midge and she herself into someone Sarah hardly recognizes. In Tangles’ melancholic conclusion, the title also acknowledges the difficulty of severing emotional bonds, even when they only hold on to an empty shell.