Review: Beautiful Boy

This is another film that relies almost entirely on the performances of the two leads to keep you engaged. Luckily for Shawn Ku he had Michael Sheen and Maria Bello as the grieving parents in this remarkable story about the aftermath of losing a child.
There are a lot of quiet moments in this film where all we have is the facial expressions of the leads to let us know what is happening. More than once we have the point of view of an outsider, looking over a shoulder or through an open door-which helps to reinforce that while we can try to empathize with their characters we can never really understand what is going on in their heads.
The animosity between the parents when they are fighting about the appropriate reaction to their loss, and the chemistry when they hide away from the reality for a while shows both sides of how shared pain can either drive a couple apart or bring them closer together.