A family story seen obliguely

  Blue Heron, an absorbing debut film from Canadian director Sophy Romvari, begins as if it's going to be an idyl about the joys of childhood. Romvari introduces us to the kids of a Hungarian immigrant family that's settling into a new home on Vancouver Island in the 1990s.

  A truck is unloaded, and the kids are encouraged to get out of the way. Romvari and cinematographer Maya Bankovic keep the camera close to their characters. You almost feel the children brushing past.

    Romvari bases the film on her experiences, and she shifts times and viewpoints to intriguing effect. Romvari juxtaposes a poetic cinematic vocabulary with more straightforward scenes. But even those can be tricky. At one point, Romvari's central character appears as an adult social worker who visits her parents to discuss what happened to her older brother.

      But I get ahead of myself. To clarify, Sasha — the story’s main character — is eight at the film's outset. Eylul Guven gives an amazingly unaffected performance as an eight-year-old who plays with her siblings and seems to be living a normal childhood. 

      Gradually, we learn that Sasha's older stepbrother, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), has behavioral issues. At times, he seems fully present, but he's often remote. At one point, he falls asleep on the front porch steps and can't be roused. 

    Amid the disorientation, Romvari evokes richly evocative childhood moments: Sasha watching her mom peel potatoes, for example, an ordinary moment but one that lingers. Sasha is forming a memory.

        The role of each of Sasha's parents becomes clear. Dad (Ádám Tompa) works at his computer and sometimes takes photos of the kids. He's as much an observer as a parent. Mom (Iringó Réti) participates more actively in family life, although she can be frustrated by the demands of a difficult son and three other children.

       Romvari seldom offers context, slowly revealing as much as we need to know. Jeremy's  worst behaviors are kept off screen, but his impact registers in the faces of his parents and in Sasha's struggle to come to grips with what's happening.

       Before we have a complete handle on any of this, Ramvari pushes her film 20 years forward. Now grown, Sasha appears as a filmmaker played by Amy Zimmer. She's working on a documentary about her brother, who — we learn — committed suicide. Sasha films a scene in which a group of social workers reflects on whether anything might have prevented Jeremy's suicide. 

      At times,  Romvari’s shifting perspectives push us out of the film, forcing us to reorient ourselves. Some may find this distracting, but Romvari’s approach serves an important thematic purpose. You can turn Jeremy's story this way and that. You can talk to those involved. You can lament the lack of services that might have helped. In the end, though, there is no single revelation that puts Jeremy’s suicide into perspective. 

       But even if something traumatic can never be fully understood, it still must be remembered, mulled, and played again in the mind's eye. Romvari may not be able to explain Jeremy's suicide, but she makes the experience of growing up and carrying it into adulthood deeply affecting.

      Perhaps when it comes to visiting the past in search of answers, we all become immigrants in foreign terrain.