Nanu Segal/Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Marvelous and the Black Hole (2021)
Teenage anger and teenage coping mechanisms finally get their due in this sensitive and charming film about how a girl learns how to live with her grief. There are no villains in the movie other than everyone’s pain. Thirteen-year-old Sammy (Miya Cech) is acting out so much about her mother’s death that by the end of the school year her father Angus (Leonardo Nam) has had it. To give her summer some focus, he forcibly enrolls Sammy in community college classes, through which she meets Margot (Rhea Perlman), a children’s magician and the Maude to Sammy’s Harold. The requirements of the course compel Sammy to seek out Margot’s help, and the relationship that slowly springs up between them is a blessing to them both.