Colin West’s LINOLEUM is a film with very nice long stretches that aren’t terribly original, but in its last 10 minutes it takes a spectacular turn which sheds a different light on everything that happened before.

LINOLEUM premiered at Sundance, and it seems like a typical Sundance movie: a bit surreal, a bit whiny, and very nostalgic. It’s about the almost 50 year old Cameron (Jim Gaffigan), who lives with his wife and children in a US suburb and hosts a science show which is broadcast on the local station late at night and mourns his missed opportunities: he once wanted to become an astronaut, but like so many things, nothing came of it.

And then suddenly a corvette falls from the sky, and astronaut Kent Armstrong (also Jim Gaffigan) steps out of the wreckage, who seems like a younger, more satisfied version of Cameron. When an old space capsule lands in his garden later on, Cameron’s life begins to go off course. While his daughter Nora (Katelyn Nacon) struggles with being an outsider, a mysterious old woman appears and a psychologist explains exactly what LINOLEUM is about, but you only find that out later. After the spectacular last 10 minutes, you feel the need to watch the film all over again in order to check if it all coheres. Colin West talks about the feeling of having missed opportunities to have had a different, better life in a tricky, highly original way.

Michael Meyns

Translation: Elinor Lewy