One of life’s universal dilemmas is the gap between parent and child. On the one hand we have the guardian figure who, despite good intentions, can be too set in their worldview to be able to see things from any other perspective. On the other, there’s the child who navigates the world with feeling but lacks clear understanding of their own turmoil and of the overwhelming, tangled abstractions that create it. It’s a chasm that simply cannot be bridged in a linear manner.
The usual coming-of-age movies contain a clever way of flattening out the complex interactions that take place within this dynamic — the shifting planes, the uncertain worldviews. We get to witness the unabashed vibrancy of youthful emotion in all its heart-warming glory, until a “coming-to-reality” moment offers a passable counterpoint.
While Nicholas Ma’s Mabel follows a not dissimilar plot structure, it provides a rewarding watch as it nicely captures the essential nature of the disconnect that a teenager sometimes experiences with the outer world. We find in Callie (Lexi Perkel) a girl who struggles to fit in, set apart from others by a laser focus inquisitiveness towards plants.
Moving to a new town with her rare preoccupation, she finds that the only person who “gets” her is Ms. G (Judy Greer), a substitute teacher whose thought-provoking observations about the plant world — specifically, the intriguing ways they communicate among each other — have been coloured with a disregard for social niceties. Over the course of Callie attempting to build a relationship with Ms. G, Callie also undertakes a scientific experiment featuring chrysanthemums, with her younger neighbour Agnes (Lena Josephine Marano)in tow.
Throughout the movie, Callie demonstrates a deep need for connection. We see it in how she soothes herself with her botanical companions. But this same desire for connection is often undermined by a teenage conviction that nobody around her understands plants as she does. Agnes bears the brunt of these moods, with her kind heart extending a hand of friendship in spite of these many instances.
Gradually we see the threads that tie together her temperamental moods with various emotional upsets that she has a hard time coping with: the resistance to the move to a new town, the unnecessarily cruel rejections she faces when she tries to connect with her new classmates, and so on. The plants become the focal point in how Callie copes with this constant rejection, allowing her a safe landing spot away from the emotionality attached with her real life.
Greer turns in a fabulous performance as Ms. G, serving as a possible kindred spirit to Callie while also dealing with issues in her own personal life. The film presents this revelation in a very natural way, in line with the relatively sombre tone that the film takes.
Ma creates a lovely balance between the characters in a number of scenes, such as Callie forgetting her reservations for a moment because she’s enjoying moments with Agnes or her family. Although these moments can present as if part of a typical teenage show or movie plot, like securing a visit to a botany laboratory.
Eventually, the diverging paths of parent and child converse in the “coming-to-reality” moment of the film where the stakes, though not tragic (thankfully), carry sufficient weight for the relationships that define Callie’s life. The sequence of events involved in the final reconciliation can grant toothy grins if you allow it.
The film presents a few obvious metaphors that take away nothing for their heavy-handedness and instead offer a measure of life-affirming balm. The title of the movie appears within the movie as a mimosa plant that Callie discovers in the woods and takes home as a botanical pet, christened as Mabel. The mimosa itself has a fascinating adaptation to nature: its leaves literally close up when it senses a threat. The movie later explains the significance of this choice in clear words: when repeatedly exposed to harmless stimuli, the mimosa will “learn that it’s not a threat” and stop closing up.
It would also be remiss to not mention the closing montage that renders like poetry in motion, presenting us with yet another metaphor that ties up some details in the film.
Mabel is like a crayon drawing composed of straightforward yet vividly colored lines, succeeding in evoking something more than the sum of its parts. It insists on showing us the birds and the trees, but the sincerity ultimately shows up in a remarkable manner: a picture that sits closer than usual in resemblance to the lived experience of growing up.
