Layal (Lubna Azabal) picked a bad time to quit smoking in “Hot Water,” to go by the orange peels that have piled up in her car. As she tells one of her students at Indiana University, she replaced nicotine with Clementines three weeks ago and it appears rather than calming any urges, the extra sugar has only heightened her anxiety as she contends with classes that are slow to pick up what she’s teaching and her own teenage son Daniel (Daniel Zolghadri) is threatened with expulsion from school after getting in a fight with a teammate on his hockey team. The additional stress of hearing her own mother back in Beirut recently took a fall adds to her headaches. It doesn’t come as much of a relief to that there may be an out for at least one of her problems when there’s an opportunity out west for Daniel to finish high school when he isn’t allowed back at his old one as his estranged father Anton (Gabe Fazio) is willing to take him in in Santa Cruz, but to do so means driving halfway across the country to see him again and part with her son who is the only person she really has in her life in Indiana, making a bag of oranges as important a piece of luggage to throw into the trunk of her Subaru Outback as any other.
The cross-country trip Layal ultimately takes with Daniel could be as tedious for audiences as it is for her when plenty of others have traveled down this road before, but writer/director Ramzi Bashour ensures that isn’t the case, particularly when in fact there’s always just the right amount of sweetness hiding in the back. Bashour’s first great decision is to enlist Azabal, one of the world’s great actors from films such as Denis Villenueve’s “Incendies” and Maryam Touzani’s “The Blue Caftan,” for a rare role in an American film, drawing on her virtually unparalleled ability to express moral flexibility, always far less firm about her position than her stern demeanor would suggest and carefully letting the cracks show. She has a field day with Layal, who as Daniel’s mother and a professor is always seen as an authority, yet she needs someone to lead her as problems pile up with no obvious solution. In some ways, she has to look to Daniel, an oddball she can admire and get aggravated by in equal measure when he gets to do whatever he wants, seemingly without consequence.
Bashour wisely refrains from providing too much history when Layal’s at a loss herself for how exactly she got here, but the film finds an interesting dynamic between the mother and son when they’re clearly at a similar crossroads, both acting a bit immature as they shuffle towards a future they can’t be sure they want to be locked into and not feeling at home anywhere. The arguments and moments of tenderness between them all occur because they’re the same rather than opposing forces and the film heads in a more intriguing direction than most, exploring codependency among people who could reasonably think they’ve got no one to lean on. The film has a gentle spirit about it that could make its humor too mild for some or its epiphanies not bold enough, but it’s definitely an asset rather than a shortcoming as Bashour shows a command over a delicate tone that makes it feel he knows where he’s going even as its characters don’t. (The film’s score, which becomes a lovely and intractable part of the film, that he co-composed with James Elkington is an extension of this light touch.)
The film’s subtlety shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of personality, which “Hot Water” has in spades when both Layal and Daniel learn about each other’s eccentricities and their trip inevitably puts them in touch with a fair share of rogues along the way, including a stopover at a naturalist colony in Colorado where the film gets its title as well as a welcome turn from Dale Dickey as a friend of Anton who can provide a place to stay for the night as well as some perspective. Even before that happens, “Hot Water” feels like a product of hard-won wisdom, but couldn’t be a smoother or more pleasurable ride.
“Hot Water” will screen again at the Sundance Film Festival on January 29th at 9 pm at the Yarrow Theater and January 31st at 6 pm. It will also be available to stream from January 29th through February 2nd via the Sundance virtual platform.