Mountains Film Review: Home is a delicate thing

Change creeps its way through Little Haiti in Monica Sorelle’s Mountains, about an immigrant family facing the loss of their neighbourhood and identity.

In a little homely house, Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) lives with his wife Esperance (Sheila Anozier), who he calls Queen, and their son Junior (Chris Renois). It is a little tight for space, but it is beautifully colourful, decked out with cultural trinkets and fabrics for Esperance’s job as a dressmaker. She also works as a lollipop lady (crossing guard, for international readers) to make ends meet, while Xavier spends his days as a demolition worker. In contrast to his parents’ manual labour, Junior dreams of making it as a stand-up comic, to the confusion of his mum and dad who associate work with using their hands. At a family gathering, Junior is mocked as a ‘little stick figure’ compared to the grownups who expect men to look a certain way.

Old and new are in constant conflict in the film, with one unable to win without the submission of the other. Values brought over from Haiti by his parents don’t make sense to Junior, who has only ever known Florida and the American Dream. Xavier took on tough gigs as a young man to make ends meet, hopeful of providing a better future for his son, but now doesn’t understand the future he has gifted Junior with. The new generation bring with them new expectations for what they want from life, rubbing up against the small-c conservative customs of immigrant parents just trying to hold on to a little bit of home.

And home is fragile in Mountains. Car radios talk of gun violence back in Haiti. Anonymous phone calls ask Xavier and Esperance if they’ve ever thought of selling their house, part of a concerted effort by a developer to install new-builds and move residents on. Like in Kitty Green’s The Assistant, there is little overtly attacking the family’s sense of belonging, but lots of little things chip away at their notion of feeling at home. The world outside their front door looks more different every day, with notices for demolition and church closures quietly wiping away a community’s existence.

“They give me an address, I come to demolish it”, says Xavier. “And if they give you my address?”, asks a relative. The struggle at the heart of Mountains is Xavier’s part in his own neighbourhood’s destruction. Through his work he finds purpose, and dreams of saving enough to buy a bigger house with a garden and two bathrooms. But through his work, he is the hammer causing change to come rapidly to Little Haiti. He and his colleagues, who come from immigrant families too, make a living by levelling where they live.

At a family communion, parents watch their children dance in ways they consider inappropriate. At work, Xavier buys his friend gloves because he seemingly can’t afford them, but who talks about splashing out on expensive jewellery. At an open-mic night, Junior mines his relationship with his parents for humour. Interestingly, the comedy club is the one place where people of all backgrounds are seen to mingle happily. Director Monica Sorelle details the delicacy of identity as the world outside changes, through aging, immigrating, gentrification, and differences in cultural upbringing; Junior speaks English at home, while his parents speak Creole.  There is a sense of people slipping through the cracks of history in Mountains, paved over by opportunistic capitalists and the lifestyles of a country that doesn’t hold sacred each citizen’s origins and ancestry.

But for all its tension, at its core Mountains is a generational story of change and of trying to make peace with differences across time and place. There is love between Xavier, Esperance and Junior, even if there is not always understanding. Nazaire carries the film as the complex patriarch, who is adoring of his wife while losing control over the life he has tried to secure for them. Mountains is an ode to what it means to feel at home and just how precarious that feeling is.

Mountains will open in Miami theaters on August 16, 2024, in New York theaters on August 23, and nationwide on August 30. The film will be released in select UK cinemas on August 23, 2024.