There was a point in the 1990s when we saw an emerging trend in which an acting legend was paired with a young but also very strong performer, in a charming and insightful character-based drama, which often traded narrative complexity for warmth and comfort. Nick Cassavetes became quite good at these films, which is not difficult when your mother is the legendary Gena Rowlands, who frequently agreed to take part in his directorial endeavours, not as a favour but rather as a chance to support her son and help realize his vision. It’s not fair to say that Cassavetes has been living in the shadow of his father (since he has carved out a relatively unique niche with the more melodramatic and romantic fare, which is quite different from the pioneering independent work done by John Cassavetes, which were often quite bleak and emotionally challenging), and it becomes clear that he makes films that earn a strong response even when they deviate from what we’d expect from someone hailing from such a formidable filmmaking dynasty – whether this makes them good or just merely passable is up to individual interpretation. However, it is difficult to watch a film like Unhook the Stars and not feel some sense of comfort in seeing the kind of delicate, earnest story of friendships emerging against all odds. The proverbial example of food for the soul, rather than a thought-provoking, layered drama, the film is a wonderfully exuberant celebration of life, a story of making your way through a hostile world by finding a few close friends from an entirely different walk of life, in order to weather some of the more unpredictable storms that are bound to follow you as you navigate life. Solidly crafted and truly heartwarming, Unhook the Stars is a lovely film in several different ways.

There are many themes orbiting around the heart of Unhook the Stars – the two most prominent being that of motherhood and companionship, which are reflected in the main character’s different relationships with the two other protagonists, each one of them serving a different function in her life. Loneliness is a difficult subject to explore without resorting to overt sentimentality, and while it can become saccharine after a while, there’s a genuine honesty to how this film addresses these issues, and resolves them by looking primarily at a woman who is comfortable in her solitude, but possesses a deep sadness that keeps her in a state of constant melancholy, which is not helped by the radical changes surrounding her – whether it is her husband’s passing, her daughter abandoning her or the new neighbours that force themselves into her life, the story explores her attempts to make sense of the world through interactions with other people. It’s an oddly compassionate fable that avoids the traditional technique of putting the main characters in conflict at the start and showing their icy relationship gradually thawing as they get to know each other – the characters of Mildred and Monica become good friends from the start, and they never really have a severe falling out, with the film focusing on the fact that some friends enter our lives for only a short amount of time – but it is during this period where we can find the most substantial changes being made, which is reflected in the maternal relationship that develops between the characters. Cassavetes weaves many different ideas together, and creates an undeniably tender story of cross-generational friendship, one that is surprisingly tender and earnest, rather than following the same formula we had undoubtedly seen countless times previously.

In many ways, Unhook the Stars feels like Cassavetes’ heartfelt love letter to his mother. It’s not surprising that some of her most memorable late-career performances came from films directed by her son, who shows very little hesitation in inheriting his father’s undying devotion to showcasing Rowlands, making her a muse that inspired a lot of his work. Naturally, this entailed her taking on a slightly different set of roles (since she was never afraid to play women of a certain age, and always avoided relying on tropes and cliches in the construction of her characters), but the same dedicated spark that persisted from her breakthrough decades before is embedded deep within this film. Rowlands is exceptional here – she is more subdued than she was earlier in her career, but the 1990s allowed her to take on a range of roles that were less demanding, but still brilliantly written, and while there are some points where we have to wonder whether she was not the best fit for the role (since the film seems to be skirting around the relationship between Mildred and Monica, viewing their connection less as a surrogate mother-daughter relationship, and more as a purely platonic friendship), but she easily circumvents this by giving an enormous amount of effort to a character that may have been slightly out of her wheelhouse, but which she still masters with the incredible consistency we expected from the actress. Marisa Tomei and Jake Lloyd had the intimidating task of sharing the screen with arguably the greatest actress in the history of the English language, but they rise to the occasion, turning in equally strong performances that feel genuine and lived-in, rather than just going through the emotions on which lesser actors may have depended. Unhook the Stars is character-driven, so it only makes sense that the actors tasked with bringing these roles to life would do so in a way that was thorough and meaningful.

Unhook the Stars may be predictable, but this is entirely purposeful. Cassavetes knows how to construct a film that draws out a strong response, without needing to go too far in terms of excessive emotions. This was his feature directorial debut, so he was still experimenting with style and substance, trying to find the right balance between the two without losing the audience – and as a result, we can see him borrowing liberally from many other films produced around this time, in which simple stories were executed with heart and precision, with very little time spent rambling on about issues that were not all that important in the first place. The film does follow a particular structure, but it avoids hysterics for the most part – there’s even an argument to be made that Unhook the Stars is a poignant kitchen-sink realist drama masquerading as a sentimental melodrama, and there are certainly moments in which Cassavetes seems to be trying to construct something that isn’t as trite and conventional as we may expect. It doesn’t lead to a revolutionary film, nor does it offer anything particularly noteworthy in terms of the material he is working with, but there’s enough heart to help overcome some of these issues, the director ensuring that, even at its most predictable, that there is something to be said about the interactions between these characters. It works through its flaws with exceptional wit and a lot of soulful emotion, seemingly refusing to take the easier route of just placing these characters in predictable scenarios and having them react to every situation in different shades of excessive emotion.

It is difficult to situate Unhook the Stars in a modern context, since there’s nothing particularly special about it that insists that contemporary audiences seek it out, since these stories have been told many times before, and we’ve seen it filtered through a range of creative lens that develops on their central ideas without needing to resort to the same tactics that normally define such films. Unhook the Stars has a lot of heart, enough for us to overlook the glaring flaws, and it is helped considerably by the presence of genuinely brilliant actors like Rowlands and Tomei, who take on the material with a wonderful sense of dedication, much more than those who may view such a project as an easy paycheque may be inclined towards. Cassavetes is not a director who has built a body of work that is all that impressive in terms of artistic resonance, but he knows how to pluck the strings of emotions well enough to get a reaction without making it feel like we are being manipulated into having a particular response. The ideal version of this film would have slightly more development between the different characters (and would either focus more attention on the romantic subplot, or abandon it entirely – we even forget that Gérard Depardieu is in this film, since he feels like such an afterthought), and would likely have allowed for more time to be spent exploring their place in a world that has grown hostile to those who are seen as outsiders to some degree. However, without the slightly heavy-handed tone and forthright sentimentality, it is unlikely that Unhook the Stars would have been as effective, which goes to show the value in these kinds of films and their often overwrought sense of understanding when it comes to human behaviour.