6 Balloons is a 2018 drama about a woman who learns that her brother has relapsed on his drug addiction, sending her into own spiral.
What’s most impressive about Marja-Lewis Ryan‘s deeply affecting 6 Balloons is how savagely it cuts to the pain. Addiction has almost always been portrayed as a horror but so few let that struggle bleed so effectively to those caught in the peripheral. With an uncompromising pair of pitch-perfect performances, this is a film that carefully circumvents many of the standards in the genre, not only giving addiction its weight, but also a boundless love that shapes everything about this powerful experience.
Katie (Abbi Jacobson) is planning a surprise birthday party for boyfriend Jack (Dawan Owens), trying to organize and prepare everything in a short amount of time, gathering food and balloons as her family (Jane Kaczmarek and Tim Matheson are the parents) and friends gather at the house. Last on her list is to pick up the cake and her brother Seth (Dave Franco) and his very young daughter Ella, though when she arrives at his place, she recognizes from experience that he is just beginning to come down from a heroin high. Realizing she must get him help – he relapsing after some time clean – she heads for a detox house, hoping to get him into the 10-day program. However, she’s met with hurdles at every turn, and as the party kicks off without her, she embarks on a day-long odyssey to save her brother and keep her sanity.
Ryan, who also wrote the screenplay, uses a series of self-help audio clips over the soundtrack, clearly ones that have become embedded in Katie’s very soul, comparing her efforts of taking care of an addict to that of trying to steer a boat in unknown seas. She mixes these with visuals of Katie underwater and the message is clear, that Katie has been here before but still powerless to stop it. This is never so heavy as to become the theme but subtle enough to represent everything that the film is about. Katie has extraordinary patience and Jacobson uses gentle yet harrowing glances and small movements in her hands and body to bring her own suffering to the role. It truly something.
Then there’s Franco, who has sort of had a rebirth of late, quickly showcasing a remarkable dramatic side that is steadily eclipsing his mostly unmemorable comedic spins. Seth is in trouble from the moment we meet him and the film, which kind of becomes a chaotic road trip, keeps him on a hair-trigger, having us in constant stress about his condition. He is both a wonderful and terrible father, a seesaw that keeps us always in troubling sympathy. We are primed for the worst of course, and Ryan deftly keeps the tension almost unbearable.
At about 70 minutes, 6 Balloons doesn’t waste any time. This is Ryan’s directorial debut and its a strong one. This is a quiet and deeply personal journey that is less about the melodrama than the bone-cutting truth of what drives Seth and what defines Katie. A Netflix exclusive, this is one you really shouldn’t miss.