Movies about soldiers coming home from war and trying to acclimate back into regular society can be very tricky. They are often too sentimental, too alienating, or too histrionic. It is difficult to make a situation like that exist outside of cliché and feel honest. Directors try so many different things to visualize PTSD, from flashes of the soldier’s moment of trauma to screaming fits to being unable to do a certain task. The big problem with this type of story right from the outset is that no matter what tricks a director employs, we will never know what it is like to go through something like that unless we actually do. Soldiers who suffer from PTSD are changed people in every way, and we can only observe how the react. Terrible Love, the debut feature of director Christopher Thomas, tries to have a natural take on the situation, complete with totally improvised dialogue, but in postproduction, the emotional manipulation gets turned up far too high for the drama to breathe and sink into its audience.
Amy Urbina and Rufus Burns play, well, Amy and Rufus (all the characters have the actors’ names), a married couple reuniting after Rufus’s year-long deployment in the Middle East. He is returning home two weeks early after his humvee hit a land mine, causing him to completely lose eyesight in his left eye. Initially, their reunion is joyous, filled with a lot of montage kissing, but after a few days, things for Rufus start to go very sour. He gets night terrors, gets very distant from his wife, has small triggers that lead to big episodes, and struggles with taking care of himself and their daughter Aubrey (Aubrey Davis-Williams). Amy tries to accommodate, but day after day, the strain between them becomes greater and greater.
The film benefits greatly by having dual protagonists. Amy could have easily gone into the nagging, resentful wife territory or the overly loving, devoted wife. Thankfully, she rides the line between the two very well. She doesn’t know how to feel about the situation, it’s one she could never have planned for, and that indecisiveness was something I really admired. Rufus Burns is a powerful screen presence as the wounded soldier. You believe it when he snuggles up to his wife and are terrified when you think he could pummel her to the ground. The two leads here work off each other extremely well, and getting to see both sides of the relationship is extremely helpful for this story.
However, what happened after shooting really hurts this film. This is particularly true in the music, which is relentless. Every second, there is some piece of music to tell you exactly how you are supposed to feel. And the music is loud. During a couple moments when the film shuts up, these moments really stick out and are quite powerful. Then there are the montages. Oh, god, the montages. Every time it looks like things are looking up for the couple, there will be a montage of the two kissing, hugging, smiling, and playing together. They also are not short montages. They last a couple of minutes each, or at least it feels that way.
Even with all the very obvious post-production manipulation, some very powerful moments are able to shine through. For a story like this, it would take a real screw up of a film for everything to fall flat. Two moments, in particular, really stick with me. The first is when the the two go through a car wash, and Rufus has his first breakdown after returning. It is an incredibly intense scene, as they are unable to escape the situation. The second is when Rufus, in true military fashion, talks to Amy like a fellow soldier, giving a list of rules to how they can operate. The second scene especially hits home because its score is silent for a couple of minutes and allows the actors to argue with each other in a very raw way.
For a film that aspires to be so natural, I was quite frankly so surprised how much the director did not trust it, adding layer upon layer of sentimentality and emotional directing, each one hindering the film. The thing is, if you tone all of that down, the film that remains would be pretty terrific. Amy Urbina and Rufus Burns, two actors I had never seen before, are giving it everything they have, and these performances deserve a film where they can be showcased without the need to heighten everything. The interpersonal drama between them is enough to make for a riveting picture. They make for a believable pair of people dealing with a situation so many filmmakers have tried to capture. It’s a shame they get hurt by things totally out of their hands.
