The challenges and vicissitudes of living with cerebral palsy are made quite clear in Your Friend, Memphis, a sympathetic, up-close documentary that traces a few years in the life of a young man wh…
fame) focuses on the up-and-down times the ever-hopeful Memphis has been faced with as he’s pushed into adulthood with few resources other than his own optimism.
The young fellow’s dad is a Texas gun nut who is happy to let his son use his weapons, his bi-polar mother at one point skipped off to Europe before returning to dedicate herself to the youngster and Seneca, the girl he fancies, is very sweet with him but works at Hooters as she plots a career in music and opera in New York.
But once high school is over, his friends slip away and Memphis finds himself more or less stranded. Zucker periodically checks in on the young man whose prospects become significantly bleaker as he settles into adulthood. He tries being an Uber driver but that doesn’t work out, nor does dog walking. He soon becomes convinced that he’ll never have a girlfriend until he has a job, but what he’s confronting is a life with neither.
The overall effect of the film is rightly wrenching, because it becomes increasingly clear that Memphis’ prospects in life are severely limited. Late on, there is a brutal encounter with Memphis’ dad, suddenly looking significantly older, in which he blurts out, “You’re just not bright enough to figure anything out.”
Shot across several years, the film takes a long journey from upbeat and inspirational at the outset to grim and forlorn at the end; although highly selective in what it shows, it feels comprehensive enough to indicate what’s going on. Might there be further installments? One would hope so for everyone’s sake.
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