“We’re making broccoli with three times the calcium!” boasts Victor Garber as the CEO of a corporate farming company in “Consumed,” which has its Chicago premiere Tuesday.
It’s the rare line of dialogue spoken in defense of genetically modified food in this thriller about the possible dangers of GMOs. The screenplay is from Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones, the married couple who previously collaborated on the comedies “Breaking Upwards” from 2009 and 2012’s “Lola Versus.”
The tone is more clenched this time out (Wein directs) in this story of a single mother named Sophie played by Lister-Jones (of the CBS sitcom “Life in Pieces”). A waitress in a small Midwestern farming community, her life starts to unravel when her young son develops an unexplained stomach bug and later finds his body covered in an mysterious rash. When doctors do little but shrug at his symptoms, Sophie becomes convinced GMOs are the culprit.
She never finds out conclusively because so little is actually known about the effect GMOs have on the human body. (Regardless, there are currently no laws in the U.S. that require GMO foods to be labeled as such; a good portion, however, show up in processed foods.)
Maybe GMOs are making the kid sick, maybe it’s something else. The film does an excellent job of stoking these very real fears and anxieties, but doesn’t go in for doubt or nuance. The deck is already stacked, with the narrative cutting between parallel story lines (think “Traffic”) that support Sophie’s increasing sense of panic. There are also similarities here to “Promised Land,” the 2012 Matt Damon-John Krasinski fracking drama and its depiction of rural America. What that film had was an easygoing way with expressing its moral certitude, letting the story breathe a little between moments of outrage, and “Consumed” might have benefited from a similarly lighter touch.
Here, Danny Glover plays an embattled organic farmer, and “ER’s” Anthony Edwards and “The Big Bang Theory’s” Kunal Nayyar are compromised university scientists studying GMOs while pocketing cash from Garber and his lackeys, who run a Monsanto-like company called Clonestra. They aren’t characters so much as talking points.
Though beautifully shot in and around Champaign, in summer 2014, the film lurches from one conspiracy to the next. What’s missing is a sense of what life is like in this town — the kind of people who live there, the texture of their daily grind, what they talk about when they’re not talking about GMOs.
The melodrama is layered on thick in ways that don’t always feel honest, and the script has a way of filling in all the blanks, leaving little to the imagination. But the film has some things going for it, including an ambiguity about Sophie’s mental state. Is she paranoid and possibly delusional? Or is she onto something with her amateur sleuthing?
Taylor Kinney (“Chicago Fire”) plays a single father she meets at school pickup one afternoon, and their subsequent scenes together have a nice, unforced chemistry. And Beth Grant, as Sophie’s mother, brings a warmth and quiet sense of humor that is otherwise missing from the film. She works as a secretary at the local university where GMO research is being conducted:
“It’s amazing what a multimillion donation will get you,” her boss observes, and as he turns to leave she mutters sardonically under the breath, “That mean I get a raise? Didn’t think so.” More moments like that, and the film might feel like something lived-in.
“Come on,” Kinney’s character says at one point, nudging Sophie to grab a drink after work. “How many hours have you been on your feet?”
She looks and him and pauses: “I’ve been on my feet since I was born.”
That’s a line that sounds about as organic as genetically modified corn, but the way Lister-Jones lets the words tumble out just so, it becomes a wonderful little grace note of both gentle self-mockery and a woman who feels genuinely overwhelmed.
“Consumed” screens 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Regal City North Stadium 14. For more information about the film go to consumedthemovie.com. For info on upcoming screenings go to gathr.us/films.
nmetz@tribpub.com
Twitter @NinaMetzNews