A suicide, unexpected and unexplained. The survivors, emotionally flat as the Mississippi Delta where they exist, immobilized, as if in suspended animation.
Ballast is a quiet indie film in which the suicide victim's identical twin, estranged wife and son are knocked to the mat by grief, and struggle to find their feet and their wind.
What this unclassifiable story may lack in decibels, it has in emotional depth. At once a mystery, a family drama, a snapshot of children at risk, Ballast is an unusually perceptive character study more eloquent in action than in dialogue.
Lance Hammer's feature debut takes its title from a strand of dialogue that sticks out like a cowlick. A teenage delinquent describes a solidly built man - Lawrence, the shellshocked twin of Darius the suicide - of having "ballast," that is, balance.
