In the indie drama Bring Me an Avocado, an Oakland mom goes into a coma, and her husband and two daughters must spend several months going on with their lives, not knowing whether the mom will wake up. The mom’s sister and her BFF step up to support the family by helping out with cooking and childcare. Of course, there’s a lot of pressure on this extended family, and the relationships between the three adults evolve and get complicated.
[MINOR SPOILER] After months, the mom wakes up. Things are not the same as before, and she decides, in an emotional catharsis, how the family will move forward.
Bring Me an Avocado is the first feature for writer-director Maria Mealla. Anyone who writes a coma movie has to decide how the character gets in the coma without making it an obvious contrivance; Mealla’s solution rings authentic, an event that is horrific and absolutely plausible.
Sarah Burkhalter plays the mom, and her performance takes over the final ten minutes of the movie; her character pieces together what happened while she was comatose, processes it and acts on the future of her family.; Burkhalter makes the ending very powerful. The child actors playing the daughters, California Poppy Sanchez and Michaela Robles, are superb.
I really wanted to like this Bay Area indie more than I did. It runs 104 minutes, and would have been better film at 90 minutes – and without the musical interludes. Not all of the cast is as strong as are Burkhalter and the kids. And [MINOR SPOILER] , it’s distracting when the mom spends months in a coma without any wasting, waking up looking pretty hearty, with just a bandage on her back.
Cinequest hosted the world premiere of Bring Me an Avocado.