Lorelei: Tender Story of Reunited Lovers Compassionately Charts Tough Life Hurdles

By Kim Hughes

Rating: A

A modest drama that delivers outsize rewards thanks to its exceptional cast, Lorelei quietly observes small-town high school sweethearts Dolores and Wayland as they reunite after bad choices and many difficult ensuing years tear them apart, elbowing their grandest dreams aside.

The film opens as Wayland (Pablo Schreiber, who executive produced with co-star Jena Malone) exits prison. A gang of his biker pals await on the freedom side of the gate, and the first night is spent partying and catching up for lost time.

Wayland lands at a halfway house run by the town’s no-nonsense female pastor (Trish Egan) whose commitment to the community runs deep. During an evening outreach program the pastor hosts for single moms, Wayland spots Dolores for the first time after his long incarceration.

It’s quickly established that the pair were teenage lovers who had planned to escape their dreary Washington town for glittering Los Angeles before Wayland was sent to the clink for 15 years for armed robbery. He wrote, she didn’t respond or visit, and time went by.

Sort of. In the interim, free-spirited Dolores mothered three children with different dads, none still in the picture. Meantime, Wayland counted the hours, knowing his reticence about his accomplices would be rewarded with bankable gratitude when he was released, both a blessing and a curse.

And so Dolores and Wayland begin a new chapter. The pair don’t so much consciously decide to try and pick up the pieces as drift into a new reality of being together in a makeshift family because of financial necessity and convenience.

At the centre of their renewed relationship are Dolores’ three children: sweet, gender-bending Denim Blue (Parker Pascoe-Sheppard), feisty 12-year-old Periwinkle Blue (Amelia Borgerding), and angry teen Dodger Blue (Chancellor Perry) who alternately reject and embrace Wayland as they battle with Dolores and their peers, who prey on their poverty and vulnerability.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Part of what makes Lorelei fascinating is that many of these characters are fundamentally unlikable, and indeed, are shown doing some vaguely repellent things and making stupid choices. Yet they register as sympathetic, doing the best they can within the confines of difficult circumstances.

Both Dolores and Wayland seem somehow trapped in perennial adolescence, him stunted by prison and she by too-early motherhood. The children, meanwhile, show that growing up in a home headed by loving adults, even messed-up ones, makes all the difference.

There’s more than a touch of Aaron Eckhart's George from Erin Brockovich in Wayland, whose tough-guy biker veneer is pierced by the children’s innocence as Dolores strays to follow her passion, although in Lorelei, the children have a much more consequential role.

Director Sabrina Doyle, making her feature debut, captures the almost aggressive inertia of small-town life where everybody knows everything about everyone with tight, intimate shots beneath the perennially overcast skies of the Pacific Northwest. But warmth is felt, nevertheless. Lorelei is a lovely story told with heart and without judgment.

CLICK HERE to view Bonnie Laufer’s video Q&A with stars Pablo Schreiber and Jena Malone.

Lorelei. Directed by Sabrina Doyle. Starring Pablo Schreiber and Jena Malone. Available on VOD July 30.