"Blue Heron"

☆☆☆☆☆

For the first 40 minutes or so of the brief but potent Blue Heron, it's not quite clear what we're supposed to be tracking. Sophy Romvari's beautifully crafted film seems to be a memory piece about a girl's childhood in Canada during one languid summer in the early 2000s.

The girl, Sasha, observes her family closely. Mother and Father are Hungarian immigrants on Vancouver Island. Father has a job he does from home, something to do with computers and the Internet — if we never really grasp what he does, it makes complete sense: Like their missing first names, Blue Heron lets us understand about as much as Sasha does. This is a rare film that manages to present the world in the close-up, insular way of an observant child.

What Sasha notices most, as the mostly plotless first half of Blue Heron progresses, is that her family is close and loving and Mother and Father are wonderful parents, though, perhaps the adults watching these memories may notice, they are frustrated, confused, more than a little worried. The problem, it comes clear, is their oldest child, Jeremy.

Jeremy is never quite involved. He's always off on his own, keeping to himself, irritable, strange. No one can put their finger on it, but Jeremy turns an outing to the beach into a tense, worrisome afternoon. Then one day, the police show up with Jeremy in handcuffs. But that's not the worst of it. Someone else comes to the house, and on one warm and beautiful afternoon while the other kids play on the trampoline, Mother and Father are forced into a wrenching, life-changing decision.

The second part of Blue Heron does something extraordinary with the first half, and it seems almost unfair to explain too much. Suddenly, as the audience, we're watching another story. There's a different woman on screen, someone who's examining what happened during the first part of the movie.

As a filmmaker, Romvari's change-up here would be breathtaking and showy if presented in another way, but she's willing to keep it low-key, to let the audience figure things out for itself. Eventually, it is clear that Sasha as an adult is assuming the role of Romvari the filmmaker in trying to understand what has happened with her family, to make sense of what happened to the brother whose actions that summer led to a life of unanswered questions and deep sadness for Sasha.

An adult is not a child. A child cannot be an adult. The same person cannot bridge the gap in understanding between the two parts of their lives. The questions that had no answers to the child become the inevitable answers that make no sense to the adult.

In a truly staggering sequence, adult Sasha haunts her own life, and as she does it makes total, heartbreaking sense on screen — this is what we all do: revisit the hallways and bedrooms of our childhood, looking for answers to lives that make no sense at all, except, maybe, to us.

Blue Heron made the festival rounds in 2025, and is now receiving a small theatrical release, primarily at AMC Theaters. In what's already become a strong year for movies, Blue Heron is one of the best I've seen in 2026 — and is worth seeking out and being patient with it. Its many rewards are deeply worth the effort.

Viewed April 26, 2026 — AMC Burbank 16

1615