“Separated”: Venice review | Reviews

Morris is a master at finding colorful or engaging interview topics

Premiere in Venice outside the competition almost exactly one year after Morris’ John le Carre portrait The Pigeon Tunnel bowed in Telluride, Separated will be a timely proposition for US viewers, as the presidential election is just over two months away. The film uses as source material reporter Jacob Soboroff’s acclaimed 2020 book on the subject, also called Separated. (Soboroff is one of the film’s commentators, standing alongside conscientious politicians who tried to stop the zero-tolerance policy – and one clueless politician who blithely allowed it to continue.) Fans of Morris’s elegant, intelligent style will no doubt be intrigued, and even more so infuriated.

The Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker tells how Trump took a tougher line on illegal immigration than previous presidents after taking office in January 2017. He hijacked the country’s unaccompanied children program and used it for any family that crossed the border illegally. Speaking with experts like Jonathan White, formerly of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), Morris explains how this traumatic policy led to children being separated from their parents in order to deter other potential immigrants.

As Separated To build its argument, the film occasionally switches to the fictional story of Gabriela (Gabriela Cartol) and Diego (Diego Armando Lara Lagunes), a mother and her child who make the perilous journey from Guatemala to America, evading border agents while enduring harsh weather conditions. By not giving the characters any dialogue during this perilous odyssey, Morris presents them as stand-ins for countless illegal immigrants forced to flee their homes.

Morris is a master at finding colorful or engaging interview topics, and he has two of them in Separated — one is heroic, the other much less so. White is a passionate government worker who has dedicated his life to helping children, and his anger at the Trump administration is palpable. But he tempers that anger with several sobering anecdotes about how he fought an uphill battle against Trump appointees who were determined to carry out the president’s wishes. One of them was Scott Lloyd, who unexpectedly became head of ORR — his most important trait seemed to be his willingness to obey Trump’s orders. While White is an articulate, principled individual, Lloyd seems spineless and not particularly perceptive. (In one of this despairing film’s rare humorous moments, Morris asks Lloyd if an incriminating story about his leadership style is “apocryphal” — Lloyd looks confused, possibly unsure what the word means.)

Cartol, great in Lila Aviles’ 2018 drama The Chambermaiddelivers a reduced, naturalistic performance, as does her young co-star. They are not meant to play three-dimensional characters, but rather sympathetic symbols that help Separated‘S political discussions and alarming statistics. This fictional subplot offers a look from the public’s perspective into the real lives affected by Trump’s policies, but the straightforward narrative ends up feeling simplistic, reducing such immigrants to bland abstractions.

Still, it’s hard to fault Morris’ intentions – or his refusal to offer a happy ending now that Trump is out of office. SeparatedThe film’s final moments show that while the Biden administration has moved on from some of its predecessor’s worst policies, it has not done so all of them. And of course, there’s the possibility that Trump will return to the White House in November. And as this film argues, many Americans are quick to blame immigrants for their problems – and there aren’t enough laws to protect asylum seekers. Morris’s anger is directed primarily at Trump, but he wants all Americans to recognize their complicity.