Forbearance

Directed by Lana Read, Forbearance follows an unhappily married couple (Juli Tapken’s Callie and Travis Hancock’s Josh) as they attempt to put their problems behind them after a terminal cancer diagnosis. It’s familiar yet workable subject matter that’s employed to underwhelming and mostly interminable effect by Read, as the filmmaker, armed with Cedric Gegel’s screenplay, delivers a predominantly amateurish endeavor that strikes all the wrong notes virtually from the get-go – with the picture’s arms-length atmosphere perpetuated (and compounded) by a myriad of decidedly incompetent elements (including community-theater-level performances and hopelessly unconvincing, on-the-nose chunks of dialogue). It does, as such, go without saying that Forbearance remains woefully uninvolving for the duration of its palpably overlong running time, and there’s little doubt, as well, that the repetitive structure, which is reflected most keenly in the relentless bickering between Tapken and Hancock’s respective characters, contributes heavily to the movie’s often shockingly lackluster vibe. (And this is to say nothing of Josh’s constant coughing, which becomes more and more grating as time progresses.) By the time the eye-rollingly (and entirely unearned) sentimental closing stretch rolls around, Forbearance has cemented its place as a seriously misguided and thoroughly unwatchable drama that contains few, if any, attributes worth embracing.

* out of ****