In 1967, the Summer of Love heralded some particularly progressive and turbulent years for San Francisco as thousands of young people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in search of a counterculture utopia. The anti-Vietnam War and pro-women’s liberation movements would further shake up the status quo, and by the early 1970s, the city became a nexus for the gay pride movement. With the embrace of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll woven into local life, the Bay Area was a free-spirited place that would provide a welcoming home for gay single father Steve Abbott and his daughter, Alysia, after his wife’s untimely death in 1973. Those circumstances set the stage for the astute, evocative, and eventually tearful Fairyland — the first feature film from screenwriter-director Andrew Durham.
Dramatizing Alysia’s autobiographical book Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, Durham addresses the evolving circumstances of the Abbotts’s unconventional family situation. It depicts Steve’s personal liberation and Alysia’s coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s with great sensitivity, while meticulously recreating the story’s primary setting with specific cultural and social elements. There are shots of the Castro Theater, Golden Gate Park be-ins, and pride parades, archival TV news footage, audio clips from KGO-AM, a “Rock of the’80s” station I.D. for KQAK-FM, and songs of the era, including the jaunty hit “Ride, Captain, Ride” by Blues Image and a vintage track by still-rockin’ local heroes the Flamin’ Groovies. Fairyland is very much a love letter to San Francisco and those heady years when the town was a veritable playland. Then, tragedy — the Jonestown massacre, the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk (the latter an “out” hero to the gay community), and the AIDS epidemic — upended the good vibes.
An unerring sense of time and place
The representation of time and place is unerring in Fairyland, which was produced by Oscar-winning Bay Area filmmaker Sofia Coppola, further insuring its regional cred, but it’s the father-daughter relationship at its core that gives the movie its power. Played by Scoot McNairy in peak form, Steve is an aspiring poet who apparently kept his sexuality on the down-low while he was married. After becoming a widower, Steve decides to leave his disapproving, conservative Midwestern in-laws behind and heads to Northern California with an impressionable, pre-pubescent Alysia in tow. They reach the presumed Fairyland of San Francisco, where he and Alysia find a home in the Haight, sharing a Victorian with their cheerful, glitzy landlady Paulette (Maria Bakalova), who also happens to be a drug dealer. A flamboyant drag queen is another flat mate, and there’s at least one couch surfer in the house — a bisexual guy who catches Steve’s eye.
In short order, Steve is living his truth, so to speak, with a string of lovers including a jovial “bear” (singer Adam Lambert in his first dramatic role). He’s also secured a modest publication deal and so enamored of his newly-found personal and artistic freedom that, despite his love for Alysia, he often leaves the precocious girl to her own devices. Meanwhile, Alysia’s maternal grandmother Munca (Geena Davis), who is not a fan of Steve’s lifestyle choices, keeps tabs on her granddaughter via phone calls and pushes to become the child’s primary caregiver. Steve isn’t about to give up custody, and despite often feeling neglected, Alysia learns to make the best of the independence her father grants her. Although still somewhat resentful of being left to her own devices, the teenage Alysia finds and hangs out with a couple besties, and as a music fan, takes advantage of the punk and new wave scene that flourished in San Francisco during the ’80s. But the dark specter of AIDS begins to take its toll on the gay community, and its impact on father and daughter is inevitable.
Impressive performances bring the humanity and pain
As extraordinary as McNairy is in the role of Steve with a palpable physical transformation when Fairyland moves into its last act, two young actresses — Nessa Dougherty as the child Alysia and, in a bravura performance, Emilia Jones as the teenage and young adult Alysia — are the movie’s true heart and soul. Jones, who is currently doing impressive work as the conflicted niece of a revenge-minded thief in the HBO miniseries Task, brings determination, anger, and vulnerability to Alysia, especially when her college career, semester abroad, and promising romance with a good-looking, well-to-do French boy are impacted by devastating news about her father’s health.
Knowing what we know in retrospect about the AIDS crisis and the price paid by its millions of victims and the friends and families that cared for them doesn’t diminish Fairyland in the least. In fact, that knowledge enhances the experience of watching this beautifully-wrought bummer unfold in all its humanity and pain. Just keep some tissues handy.
Fairyland is currently playing the Balboa Theater, and starts an engagement at the Roxie on Friday, Oct. 17.