Regina Williams in Life & Nothing More (CFI Releasing)

The title, Life & Nothing More, provides a clear idea of the purpose of the movie. In his second feature, Spanish director Antonio Méndez Esparza employs a documentary style to portray the struggling everyday life of a working-class African American family in Northern Florida. The focus alternates between Regina (Regina Williams), a single mother working full-time to sustain her family, and her son Andrew (Andrew Bleechington), a 14-year-old problematic teenager. Regina fears her son will follow in the footsteps of his incarcerated father. A third family member is her three-year-old daughter, Ry’nesia (Ry’nesia Chambers). With the camera in front of them (or usually behind them), Méndez Esparza reveals different aspects of family life, including the numerous confrontations between mother and son.

It can be argued that life has no well-composed structure and that it is more like a collection of disjointed episodes. In movies, the depiction of reality over fiction might be tricky. On the other side of the screen, there’s still an audience wondering: Why should I care about this constructed “reality,” even if it is convincing? Where is it going to lead me? Méndez Esparza understands this in the scenes focused on Regina, because it is easy to understand her and her need to provide for her family. Also, her deeper feelings are revealed in various interactions: while she works in a diner, avoids the flirting of a customer (they later become a couple for a time), or waits alongside her son for a judge’s sentence.

The film is more elusive when it centers on Andrew, who is mostly quiet and inexpressive, which throws the film off balance. His scenes are usually dead zones full of reiterations (many warn Andrew to stay out of trouble). The taciturn teen is more a device for the script, while Regina is the real deal.

If Méndez Esparza avoids the artifices of dramatic structure through long takes seemingly unfolding in real time, the last third of the movie veers away from its established tone. Andrew’s situation leads to a point where he’s in trouble with the law, and the film turns more toward a linear drama. Even so, Williams’s performance is completely honest, even in an unusual scene when she confronts a woman who can’t reverse her son’s legal situation. It felt as though the narrative was looking for a dramatic resolution, which contradicts the earlier sense of realism and which distinguishes the film.

The illusion of reaching a resolution or learning a lesson is what reinforces fictional narratives, and this is precisely what makes the last scene the best part of the movie. Although this is a film about “life and nothing more,” the ending subtly says otherwise. It’s about drama and storytelling.