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Every day, millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet, worrying where they’ll get their next paycheck and how they’ll pay next month’s bills. And in the dark drama Where Is Kyra?, a grieving woman finds herself in a desperate situation that causes her to take some drastic steps.
Where Is Kyra? stars Michelle Pfeiffer as the title character, a woman who’s struggling to care for her ailing mother while trying to get her own life back on track. She’s recently gone through a divorce, and she hasn’t been able to find regular work in a couple of years, so she spends her days running errands and searching for a job while living off her mother’s meager pension checks. But when her mother dies and things get even worse, Kyra becomes desperate to pay the bills—and her serious situation takes her down a risky path.
Where Is Kyra? is a story of quiet desperation, following a woman who faces hardship after hardship as she struggles to survive. From the beginning, the film is dark and gloomy. Kyra lives alone in a dreary little apartment with her ailing mother, her days filled with heartbreak and disappointment. She’s turned down for one job after another, only to come back home to watch her mother slowly slipping away—and she’s forced to handle it on her own, without friends or family to support her. Following Kyra’s mother’s death, though, her situation gets even worse. She’s left completely alone, without her mother and without a job—and her story becomes a downward spiral of hopelessness.
Despite taking a break from her acting career, Pfeiffer has no problem taking on such a challenging role. This is mostly a one-woman show—and a quiet, heartbreaking one, too. Kyra doesn’t say much, but her growing anguish comes through in her expressions and her body language.
Still, the silence and deliberate pacing of Kyra’s endless suffering make the film difficult to watch. The story doesn’t give audiences much to go on—just the occasional hints of development. It goes from gloomy to absolutely desolate, its only moments of hope coming from Kyra’s budding relationship with her neighbor, Kiefer Sutherland’s Doug, who’s also fighting to get back on track. Those fleeting moments of happiness give viewers some much-needed time to catch their breath—but the haziness of the story keeps it from being a truly powerful film.
With her strong starring performance, Michelle Pfeiffer fills Where Is Kyra? with heartbreaking drama. But, without a stronger story behind it, this dark and heavy film is just a little too quiet and distant.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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