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| Keith Kupferer and Dolly De Leon in Ghostlight. |
For the first half hour Ghostlight made me restless. Everything about it felt awkward: the actors seemed to be working too hard for obvious effects and I couldn’t find the performing rhythms. But then Dan (Keith Kupferer), a small-town road worker, is persuaded to join a community theatre production of Romeo and Juliet, and, almost magically, the movie, written by Kelly O’Sullivan and directed by O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson, settles down and turns into something quite unusual. Though it takes a while for O’Sullivan to fill in all the requisite information, we learn by bits and pieces that Dan and his wife Sharon (Tara Mallon), a teacher, have lost their teenage son Brian to suicide and are suing the parents of his girlfriend Christine (Lia Cubilete), who was intended to die with him but survived, for wrongful death because the kids got access to her folks’ pharmaceuticals. But though he and Sharon are going after them, Dan’s response to the loss of his son is mostly denial. He refuses to talk about Brian, which makes his daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallon Kupferer), who was very close to her brother, crazy. Always, we assume, a handful, Daisy can’t control her temper and keeps getting in trouble at school.