Andrew Durham’s long-awaited adaptation of Alysia Abbott’s memoir begins, like so many stories, with an orphan.
As Fairyland opens, Alysia (initially played by Nessa Dougherty) is a child in the back of a groovy Volkswagen Beetle, heading west after the sudden, barely grasped death of her mother. Steve, her mild-mannered gay dad, is San Francisco bound with his daughter, much to the concerned chagrin of her grandmother (a hugely welcome Geena Davis).
Their new, freefalling, communal existence, shaped by lovers, writers, performers and late-night parties, isn’t always the ideal environment for a little girl. Afforded independence that would make contemporary helicopter parents call for a stretcher, the youngster is almost accosted by a strange man in a car on an unaccompanied commute from school. “You’re neglecting me,” she pouts (not entirely unreasonably) at her dad.
And so this fond, wise, lived-in film chronicles a spectrum of parentification – with the parties switching roles – over turbulent decades. Its emotional force is found in the two-step between parent and child as the sweep of LGBTQ+ history catches up.
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As young Alysia, Nessa Dougherty watches the adult world with solemn concentration, absorbing rooms full of smoking revellers and strangers asleep on couches, and accidentally seeing testicles.
Working with the cinematographer Greta Zozula, the first-time director frames the early scenes at her eye level: the telephone on the wall is a long way up. One boyfriend becomes “Eddie Buddy” because she mishears the phrase her father uses to greet him; another disappears just as quickly as he arrived.
The only constant is inconsistency, yet neither Durham (who developed the project with its producer Sofia Coppola) nor Abbott is inclined to view this bumpy coming-of-age story as cautionary tale. The script chronicles the Aids crisis through hospice visits and memorials until, finally, Alysia steps in as her dad’s main carer.
Scoot McNairy gives Steve a dog-eared appeal that makes his irresponsibility inseparable from his warmth. He forgets pickups, lives in chaotic, strewn spaces and insists he is teaching independence. Once Emilia Jones (incredibly charming) takes over as the teenage and adult Alysia, there’s an irresistible daddy-daughter dynamic, even when she snaps at him for such transgressions as eyeing up a man in leather.
In cinemas from Friday, May 29th
