Leave No Trace treats us to marvellous unromanticised scenes of father and daughter, Will and Tom’s, life in the woods and this gives you a strong base to the story and to the father, daughter dynamic. Skilfully weaving into the narrative, post-traumatic-stress, unyielding family loyalty and the need for true solitude you know we are on an interesting and perhaps harrowing trip.
The deft handling of director Debra Granik in the pacing and telling of the story ensures that you are never really sure where we are heading as we troop along with the main characters and also some impressive cliché swerving is done as no character in the film is given a black hat. Everyone is doing what they think is correct for a reason and the reason makes sense – you know, real life.
There’s a documentary feel to the filming and style, and Leave No Trace is all the better for it, bringing it’s naturalistic acting to the fore even more.
Tackling such diverse topics, particularly the post-traumatic-stress parts, with subtlety and without resorting to ‘flashbacks’ or teenage histrionics is something I can only applaud and a refreshing change and restraint to this type of story. We do not need abuse and evil authorities for the trip to be engrossing and entertaining.
The cast is uniformly natural and the leads Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie having a real and honest father-daughter dynamic that in other hands may have faltered.
In the end Leave No Trace is a love story between a father and daughter were death, trauma and huge changes in their lives ultimately cannot weaken the love.
Worth a viewing but if you’re looking for Rambo or teenage ‘oh my god’ angst look elsewhere.
