Most of the Time We Are Just Waiting

It’s Nora and Taylor’s last night in their home before the town is evacuated. While young Nora tries to come to terms with the world around her, a reality that seems to be imploding upon itself, and in the process, uprooting her life from one part, and forcing it into an entirely new, alien corner, her older sister is seemingly far from that in her emotional state. If embracing this truth ushers in a sense of emptiness, as also established in the title, alongside existential musing, on the one hand, it leads to blithely gay pursuits of something completely inane on the other.

The film, in portraying this, presents an interesting contrast in how the two siblings approach the circumstance. If Taylor focuses on the immediate desires of partying with her peers, perhaps also encountering a romantic fling thrown in the mix, Nora feels her everyday concerns of school, friends, joining a sports team, even the pain of saying goodbye to her home, grow more and more diminutive in the face of what seems to be impending doom.

The narrative thus offers an intimate, meaningful engagement with a reality where large-scale evacuations alter the course of the day like a slight change in the weather, and yet, little things like pursuing a crush at a party seem bigger than the world ending sometimes. The same contrast is echoed in the conflict that develops between the two sisters by way of a narrative and plot that is constructed with care and control. The final result becomes an engagement with a single moment that remains nuanced, layered, and deeply heartfelt, alongside an equally seamless visual progression and screenplay.