Terri

About the film

Terri is a warm and subtle story, which sides with the outsiders - and does so with an edgy sense of humour and a sense of human empathy that one comes across all too rarely. Terri is a lonely teenager caught in an overweight body. He has long given up trying to achieve something that resembles a social life. It doesn't help things either that he lives with his slightly senile uncle, likes to spend his time setting up mousetraps in the forest and comes to school dressed in his pyjamas. Nonetheless, he manages to become odd friends with the beautiful Heather, who has fallen out of favour with everyone else after a sultry event during a lesson. At the same time, the friendly school inspector Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly) tries, in his own clumsy way, to guide Terri out into life. 'One does the best one can,' as he says, and this turns out to be a somewhat foolish piece of advice. Azazel Jacobs (the son of the experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs) elegantly balances between deadpan irony and genuine empathy, and keeps the melancholy tone alive with sun-bathed images, which make 'Terri' more timeless than retro. The debutant Jacob Wysocki is phenomenal in the title role.