By focusing on Seattle and expensive retreats like the San Juan Islands, Lynn Sheltonâs moviesâlike 2009âs Humpday, 2013âs Touchy Feely, and 2014âs Laggiesâcapture a particular cross-section of the Pacific Northwest. Maybe because I grew up in it, I love itâbut it ignores the expansive gloominess and washed-up beauty of rural and suburban Washington. Thatâs a shame, because theyâre as much a part of the state as Seattle, a city increasingly dominated by such misfortunes as Jeff Bezosâ inexplicable glass testicles.
So I was pleasantly surprised by Sheltonâs latest, Outside In, filmed in suburban Granite Falls and Snohomish Countyâlocales that are Bezos-free (for now) and captured in all their rainy, tree-sheltered, moss-flecked glory. The subject matter, too, is more urgent than Sheltonâs usual fare: Outside In focuses on a subtext-heavy friendship between a high school teacher, Carol (Edie Falco), and Chris (Jay Duplass), the 38-year-old former student she helped parole from the Walla Walla State Penitentiary after a 20-year sentence. As Chris, Duplass does some remarkable work with only his eyes and smile, under a beard so patchy its mere existence triggers inscrutable sadness; Falcoâs great, per usual, as a conflicted, tightly-wound woman in an Edith Wharton-grade bad marriage. And Outside In isnât actually that far from a Wharton novel: Itâs a completely believable web of conflicting desires among people who lack the language and wherewithal to ask for what they want. But stick with it, and Outside Inâs relentless sadness gives way to something more gently hopeful than its numb beginning implies.
Outside In wasnât filmed in Seattle, but it reminds me of the Seattle I grew up in, a city that felt forgotten by the rest of the country, dominated not by startups but by blue-collar industries like logging, fishing, and airplane manufacturing. I miss that place. I always will. But Sheltonâs new film feels like home.