Dandelion

The teenager Mason Mullich grows up among the windswept fields and infinite skies. In nature, he escapes the pain around him. His best friend Eddie lives with his dominant brother Arlee in a hovel. His parents are distant from each other and from him, his mother numbs the pain with pills and drink, his father Luke is frustrated about the missed opportunities in his life. Then the self-destructive Mason meets Danny, a girl who recently moved to his town with her mother. Despite the fact that her parents are divorced and she has a fairly nomadic lifestyle, the pleasant, vital Danny is not cynical. It looks as if something beautiful could blossom between the two of them. Then father Luke accidentally runs over a man who dies. Mason comes to the rescue. He decides to sacrifice himself for his father and is sentenced to two years juvenile detention. When he returns, he finds even more misery than before, but he turns out to be able to change his surroundings. Dandelion is a sensitive, tender drama that explores the mystery of love in its various disguises. Mark Milgard wanted to tackle issues such as beauty and the chaos of love in his independent feature début and consciously shot the film in beautiful exterior locations. The layered, occasionally complicated characters are convincingly portrayed by the actors, of which special mention should be made of Vincent Kartheiser (Mason) and Taryn Manning (Danny).