In the superbly structured documentary Charm Circle, writer-director Nira Burstein exquisitely unspools the story of her own bizarre family. At first, we meet Burstein’s father, a sour character who inexplicably is about to lose his rented house, which has become unkempt, even filthy. He is mean to Burstein’s apparently sweet and extraordinarily passive mother, and the scene just seems unpleasant.
But then, Nira Burstein brings out twenty-year-old videos that show her dad as witty, talented and functional. We learn a key fact about the mom, and then about each of the director’s two sisters.
Some of the publicity about Charm Circle describes the family as eccentric, but only one daughter is a little odd – three family members are clinically diagnosable. Charm Circle is a cautionary story of untreated mental illness and the consequences of failing to reach out for help.
This is Nira Burstein’s first feature, and she has two things going for her: unlimited access to the subjects and a remarkable gift for storytelling. Charm Circle works so well because of how Burstein sequences the rollout of each family member’s story.
The Nashville Film Festival returns in a few days, and I attended a screening of Charm Circle, with a Nira Burstein Q&A at NashFilm two years ago. It went on to play both the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and Cinequest, and can now be streamed on the Criterion Channel.