The Last Barbecue
Walking back to my car one clear July night after a visit with in-laws, I realized that the wide, crew-cut lawns and winding, deserted streets of crisp, new suburbs–carved out of farmland in Schaumburg, Wheaton, and beyond–were the means to an end, and that end was silence.
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The story line is minimal, almost nonexistent. And the action is mundane in the extreme. But like a Japanese monk painting a breathtaking mountain view in a few brush strokes, Neveu finds significance in small events–filling an ice chest, running out to the store, cracking open a beer. Set in a suburban backyard, this dark comedy offers two snapshots of a typical barbecue, before and after. But this is not the relaxed burnt-meat fest of Weber grill ads. It’s a time when all the negative feelings roiling beneath the surface for years threaten to erupt.
Barry, their immature adult child, resembles both parents. Like his father, he seems on the verge of boiling over–especially when Ted shows his displeasure that Barry and his wife aren’t staying for the barbecue. They’re on their way to Barry’s ten-year high school reunion, and clearly he’s obsessed with proving to his old chums that he’s not the “asshole” he was back then. Like his mother, he tries to control his anxiety by controlling his environment: his well-being seems to depend entirely on whether he can keep his new shirt clean and sharp looking.
When Barry comes back to his folks’ house from the reunion with an old girlfriend in tow (the wife went home early), Matthew Brumlow as Barry and Ashley Bishop as the old flame hit just the right notes. We sense the sexual tension between them but also their feelings of shame–and in Barry’s case, the overpowering urge to right some previous wrong step. We never find out, however–either from Neveu’s dialogue or from Brumlow’s and Bishop’s performances–exactly what these two expected or hoped would happen at his parents’ house.
