Off to Boston for Certainty

If you ask me where I’m from? BOSTON.

The O’Malleys are gathering. Look out, Boston. My cousin Mike’s movie, Certainty, which he wrote, is premiering tonight at the Boston Film Festival. I saw a rough cut of it at a screening last year at the Soho House, so I can’t wait to see it finished. Directed by the wonderful Peter Askins, it stars Adelaide Clemens, Tom Lipinski, Bobby Moynihan, Giancarlo Esposito, Tammy Blanchard and Kristen Connolly, all wonderful young actors. Giancarlo Esposito plays the priest (a lovely performance) and Valerie Harper gives a fantastic performance as the mother (and I have to say, she is channeling my aunt Marianne).

Certainty, which began as the play Searching for Certainty tells the story of a young couple who are getting married and go to a Catholic pre-cana retreat. Par for the course for young engaged Catholics. On the pre-cana retreat, with a bunch of other engaged couples, some issues start coming out. That is the point of such weekends. Marriage is for keeps. How well do you know your partner? Can you trust him or her? Are you on the same page when it comes to kids, work, religion? Cracks start to open. Small cracks at first. But eventually, when the young woman reveals that she has started going to church regularly, and in secret, her fiance wonders what that means. He is not prepared for it. He tries to be supportive. The movie is so much more than that, however. It is a sweet and funny look at a group of young people starting out in the world, trying to make sense of their families, their upbringings, and their current situations.

Mike is an incredible writer. He has what you might call a gift. While he has been working as an actor nonstop for 20 years now (can it be that long?), he is also a serious playwright (and many of his current TV gigs also involve writing). I feel like I could pick a line of Mike O’Malley dialogue out of a lineup. He has a distinctive voice, a distinctive sound, and his Catholic upbringing and Catholic childhood come to the forefront in this sensitive funny story of a young couple on the verge of striking out on their own together. Valerie Harper is wonderful, giving a detailed and specific performance of a woman I recognize (not just my aunt Marianne – but a TYPE of Catholic woman – basically every woman in my family). She’s devout, down-to-earth, supportive, but nobody’s fool. While under her roof, her children must abide by her rules … but she’s not a martinet. She loves her kids. She wants to let them go. But it’s not always that easy.

This is a big moment for Mike, the movie has been a couple of years in the making. Lots of good friends and family members are in it (many of them having done the original production of the play, Searching for Certainty): my cousin Kerry O’Malley, my brother Brendan O’Malley, Missy Yager (who directed my script reading out in Los Angeles), and good friend Larry Clarke (who currently can be seen in Contagion as Kate Winslet’s right-hand man) all have supporting roles as other couples at the pre-cana retreat.

Swooping into Boston will be O’Malley family members from far and wide, a hilarious Catholic swirl of support and frenzy. Mike and Lisa will be there.

Boston people: There might still be tickets. You can purchase them at the Film Festival website.

Certainty is a movie that takes young people seriously, that does not look at them with a jaundiced eye, a cynical eye. It is a movie about family ties, and how strong they are, despite the fact that your family drives you crazy. It’s about going to church, and what that means, and do we need to talk about it? It’s about falling in love with not the idea of the person you’ve been dating, but the real article. Sometimes that’s not so easy. There are many things in the way.

Mike is so good at writing about all of those things that are in the way of our connections to one another.

Boston, here we come!