In Chelsea Bo’s affecting family drama No Right Way, Harper (played by Bo herself) is a 27-year-old go-getter in LA. She gets a call from child protective services in Las Vegas, informing her that her 13-year-old half-sister Georgie (Ava Acres)can no longer stay with her mother. Because their father is away on a work assignment, Harper drives to Vegas to pick up Georgie herself.
Harper finds that Georgie’s mother Tiffany (Eliza Coupe of Happy Endings) is a hot mess. There may be no one right way to raise a child, but there are wrong ways, for which Tiffany is the poster girl. Addled by a serious drug addiction, Tiffany runs with scary men and can’t even manage to kep the electricity on; as a result, Georgie, very smart with a big personality, is essentially feral.
A fundamentally decent person, Harper is appalled by Tiffany’s failure to provide Georgie with guidance and stability, let alone a safe environment. The dad is comfortable with his current hands-off parenting and gun shy of engaging with Tiffany, so Harper sees herself as Georgie’s last chance and tries to get custody of Georgie from Tiffany.
But Harper is out of her depth dealing with an addict’s denial and sociopathy, and doesn’t reckon that Tiffany, who has no boundaries at all, will explode in manipulative drama and involve Georgie herself in the vortex. Harper makes a mistake that keeps her from gaining control of the situation, and soon Harper is getting a big dose of no good deed goes unpunished. Even neglected kids often prefer to stay with the parent they know, and teenagers relish the freedom of an unengaged guardian.
Chelsea Bo wrote and directed No Right Way, and the exceptionally smart screenplay indicates that she is a perceptive observer of human nature, and her characters are authentically complicated.
Harper is responsible, but she’s naïve and a little judgy. When she observes the untidy household of Tiffany’s friend Amy, we can see Harper aghast at both red flags (the littlest kid is encamped in a closet) and Amy not meeting middle-class norms (we can see her thinking OMG she’s smoking in front of the kids!); but Amy’s teenagers happily play games with the family after dinner – an accomplishment most American parents would envy.
Amy (Sufe Bradshaw of Veep) naturally relates more to Tiffany than to the privileged Harper. But Amy has seen some bullshit in her day, and her sympathy to Tiffany is tempered by a focus on Georgie’s welfare.
Coupe is brilliantly twitchy and volatile as Tiffany, who, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, erupts to make everything someone else’s fault.
Both lead actors – Bo and Ava Acres – are believable and relatable. Acres, who already has 57 screen credits on IMDb, is a force of nature as Georgie.
No Right Way is compelling without any tinge of soapiness. A scene where the dad reams out Harper on the phone as disfunction swirls around her is especially strong. This is a remarkably promising debut feature for Chelsea Bo. I screened No Right Way for its world premiere at Cinequest.