Mouse Film Review: A Perfect Dramedy

With award-worthy performances at its centre, Mouse portrays grief and all its complexities via heartbreaking humanity and zinging humour.

In the latest gem from co-directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (Saint Frances, Ghostlight), the adult characters learn just as much about themselves as the teenage ones. Everyone is constantly adapting to the curveballs—major or minor—that life throws at you.

It’s the summer of 2002 in Arkansas. Best friends Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.) and Callie (Chloe Coleman, My Spy) are on the cusp of their senior year of high school. Callie is outgoing and sociable, the most obvious definition of a ‘drama kid’ you could imagine. In contrast, Minnie is quieter and more considered in her approach to life, but no less intelligent. Within the briefest moments of Mouse’s opening, O’Sullivan and Thompson sketch this gorgeous friendship tremendously well. It is as realistic and believable as you could get and makes the tragedy that strikes that much more hardhitting. It hits like a thunderbolt, out of the blue, just as such as a moment would.

Rather than crumble into a sobfest, Mouse moves from strength to strength in its depiction of grief and how everyone deals with it differently. Mr. Murdaugh (David Hyde Pierce, Frasier), Callie and Minnie’s drama teacher, says as much in a powerful scene late in the film. For Minnie, the aftermath to the event has felt like a competition-of-sorts. As a seventeen-year-old, she needs to navigate her upended world as best she can, forming a complicated relationship with Callie’s mother, Helen (a sensational Sophie Okonedo, Mrs. Mandela), as opposed to her own mother, Barbara (a memorable Tara Mallen, Ghostlight). Whether 17 or older, the characters of Mouse all struggle in this spiraling situation they find themselves in.

The performances of everyone involved are jaw-droppingly great. As the two central characters, Okonedo and Mallen Kupferer are the obvious highlights. The latter keeps the whole film pinned together, delivering charismatic, layered acting of suppressed emotions and teenage confusion. The former is magnetic as Helen, giving us a character that could crack at any time, and at many points does. The big, emotional blowouts of Mouse, of which there are many, never feel forced or melodramatic. They’re always believable and deeply moving.

The supporting cast more than play their part too. As Barbara, Mallen brings humour alongside hefty cathartic moments; her character is one of the adults who learns just as much as the children. Iman Vellani’s (The Marvels) Kat similarly brings a magnetic comedy to proceedings, whilst also adding the extra romantic dimension to Minnie. When the two share their first kiss or tell each other how cute one another is, the giggles and blushes that follow are so brilliantly teenage it is uncanny.

Amongst all its strengths, Mouse succeeds so much because of its perfect tone. O’Sullivan and Thompson, who co-wrote Saint Frances and Ghostlight, are masters of combining drama and comedy. Mouse can be gut-wrenchingly moving in one scene, and laugh-out-loud funny the next. Impressive visuals from DOPs Nate Hurtsellers (Theater Camp) and Luke Dyra (Ghostlight) also amplify such moments. For the most part, the camerawork is intimate, with some very striking elements interspersed, from swift zooms, birds-eye views, heavy focus on an object, or imaginative scene blocking. Although some parts come together too neatly, Mouse is an irresistibly strong coming-of-age story, where everyone, from baby to teenager to middle-ager, is constantly learning how to navigate the world and people around them.

Mouse premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on February 13-21, 2026. Read our Berlin Film Festival reviews and our list of 20 films to watch at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival!