Friday, July 01, 2016

Review of 'Jack of the Red Hearts'

A teenage girl living on the skids fakes an ID to get a job as a live-in carer for a family with an autistic little girl...and despite no training or credentials manages to develop enough rapport with the girl to help her. The teenage is doing it so she can be together with her orphaned sister, so she's trying to go straight, clean up her drug habit and put her life of minor criminality behind her.

It's a bit soppy and the anticipated (and telegraphed) disasters implied by leaving a vulnerable child in the sole car of...well, another vulnerable child...don't really materialize, even though the autistic girl wanders off, gets lost, climbs on roofs and so on. The ending is a bit fairy-tale. But its heart is in the right place - the social services aren't the bad guys, the family is more understanding than they ought to be, and I think it's quite a nuanced perspective on autism and what it means for parents to have an autistic child.

Watched on Netflix via smartphone and Chromecast.

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