Disfluency. It’s not a word you hear in everyday conversation. It’s the interruption, the disruption in the flow of a person’s speech. Anna Baumgarten couldn’t have chosen a better title for her confident coming-of-age drama, a powerful film about trauma and how it disrupts the flow of everyday life, and makes it hard to communicate our true feelings to the people we love.
Libe Barer gives a powerful lead performance as Jane, a smart girl who has nonetheless flunked out of her final semester at college. Our confusion matches those of the people around her. We see hints of what may have driven her off-course. Disorientingly, we see Jane surrounded by Christmas lights as she makes her way through a hallway, ultimately ending up in a lecture hall being led by a professor (Molly Hagan) speaking on the subject of disfluency. Jane wakes up, rattled, in the back of her parents’ car on the way home from school. Her mother is obviously angry over what’s happened, stressing that Jane needs to take more responsibility, but her father is more understanding and recognizes that his daughter is going through something.
While a return home guarantees Jane a lot of awkward conversations, it also means time spent with her older sister, Lacey. The two are like peas in a pod, and there’s a reason the link between them feels so natural. Lacey is played by Libe’s real-life sister, Ariela, best known for her roles in Runaways and How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Interestingly, the dynamic between them is flipped as Ariela is actually the younger sister, and I think you can spot just a little bit of glee at playing the elder.
Baumgarten deals with a lot of heavy subject matter, based on her personal experiences that she first expressed in a 2018 short film. Nonetheless, Disfluency isn’t as somber as one might think. It’s actually quite hopeful and light, with Jane taking active steps to move beyond the past. She reconnects with an old crush who is eager to grow their relationship and befriends a girl who has become a small-town celeb due to her social media following. Jane also puts her education to good use by helping out her friend Amber (Chelsea Alden), a single mother with a deaf child, learn how to use sign language. She also begins recording the conversations with her friends as part of a plan to get the credit needed to graduate.
The thing about all of Jane’s plans, including her plans to build on personal relationships, is that they require all of her headspace and that’s something she simply can’t provide. Jane is in a fog as she tries to overcome a traumatic event from school. Clever editing and cinematography put us in her shoes and give the film a hazy atmosphere as if walking through a dream. Baumgarten does a great job of capturing how seemingly random things can spark unwanted memories at surprising moments. Her characters feel alive and authentic, with most of them resembling people you might know in your own life.
Disfluency is going to connect with a lot of people who have their own past experiences with trauma. What emerges most strongly is that Baumgarten is telling a story that only she can tell in the way she’s telling it. While the broad strokes are familiar, it’s in the smaller details where Disfluency feels so grounded, genuine, and intimate. It’s a strong feature debut for Baumgarten with memorable performances by Libe and Ariela Barer that remind us that smaller movies like this shouldn’t be overlooked.
Disfluency is open in select theaters now, expanding on January 17th before a digital release on January 24th.
