Just like its perceptive eight-year-old protagonist Billie (Maélya Boyd), Marie-Claire Marcotte’s ambitious amalgam of family drama and fable Neon Dreaming retreats into the titular world of imagination when faced with uncomfortable realities. One of these is the absence of Billie’s mother. She is a celebrated ballerina and celestial beauty in the made-up memories of the headstrong hero. Billie’s ability to deceive others as well as herself seems to run in the family. Her guileful grandmother (Genevieve Langlois) is the first to come up with the treacherous tales of her daughter as supreme stage star, a lie that might be as comforting to herself as to her grandchild.
The latter comes critically close to losing herself in the deceptive daydreams embellished by shimmering neon lights and the gleaming of Billie‘s bracelet, which reacts like a mood ring. It is one of several details that don’t lead anywhere, however, as the story gets stuck with a revelation that the fragile framework is neither able nor willing to support. As a school speech overseen by sympathetic teacher Ms. Sam (Sheila Isaro) exposes Billie’s escapist excuses, and by extension those of her father (Corey Loranger), the story gives a glimpse of what happened to her mother. Her fate turns the children’s fable into something like an inverted infantilisation of a speculative social drama.
The Canadian director-writer simplifies the narrative’s underlying issue of neuro-diversity in a parent and how it relates to their ability to care. This sugarcoating seems uncomfortably linked to the film’s problematic legitimisation of medical violence and institutional injustice. Instead of openly addressing the question of whether Billie’s mother would indeed have been incapable to take care for her child, the patronising plot reduces psychological struggle to a convenient tool. In similar fashion the romanticisation of the protagonist, who is arguably protected unnecessarily, becomes a superficial distraction from pressing questions about family fictions.
Neon Dreaming premiered at the 2024 Tallin Black Nights Film Festival.