‘Mouse’ review: Rich, bittersweet US coming-of-age drama from ‘Saint Frances’ filmmakers

Dirs: Kelly O’Sullivan, Alex Thompson. USA. 2026. 120mins.

It’s 2002 in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and the senior year of high school is on the horizon. Callie (Chloe Coleman) has her whole future mapped out; it involves Juilliard, an electrifying stage debut, numerous Emmys and a lifetime achievement award. Meanwhile, the future for her reserved best friend, Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer, remarkable) is much the same as her past: an adoring front row seat in the audience for the Callie show. When the connection between the two is unexpectedly severed, Minnie finds herself drawn into a friendship with Callie’s mother, Helen (Sophie Okonedo). Mouse is a rich, emotionally satisfying and superbly acted bittersweet drama about the bumpy journey of coming to terms with loss.

There’s a real warmth to this storytelling 

Written by O’Sullivan and directed by both O’Sullivan and Thompson, Mouse revisits themes that the pair previously explored in their first two pictures. Like the 2019 SXSW audience award winner Saint Frances, which Thompson directed and O’Sullivan wrote and starred in, the film is driven by an unlikely friendship between two characters separated by age. And like 2014’s Ghostlight, which the pair co-directed and which premiered in Sundance, Mouse deals with grief and finding a way to heal through art and performance. Following its premiere in Berlin’s Panorama section, the film should be well-received at further festivals and will likely be an attractive proposition for arthouse distributors. 

Popularity, in this community, is measured in toilet paper. At the end of the school year, the departing seniors hurl rolls of bathroom tissue into the trees and shrubs in the front yards of favoured juniors. It’s a sign of respect, explains Minnie impatiently to her frazzled mother Barbara (sensitively played by Mallen Kupferer’s real-life mother Tara Mallen). A stunted tree in front of Minnie’s modest home is adorned with a single roll, while the grand frontage of Callie’s parents’ mansion looks like the aftermath of a ticker tape parade. Callie’s popularity drags Minnie in its slipstream. She is grudgingly accepted by the school’s mean girls, led by the sanctimonious and insufferable Cara (Audrey Grace Marshall). 

When their friendship is upended, however, Minnie finds herself written out of their shared history; she’s a distant runner-up in what she describes, perceptively, as the “grief Olympics”. But while Minnie is overshadowed by the performative angst of Cara and her fellow popular girls, Helen sees her and recognises her pain. The time that they start to spend together is a comfort for both. But gradually, Minnie begins to compare Helen’s elegant home with the chaos of her own household. And she starts to believe that the way to honour her friend is to become more like her. 

There’s a real warmth to this storytelling which is echoed in the cinematography and lighting, the film infused with a tawny, late summer glow. Music choices – there’s a delicate piano score and a selection of period-appropriate pop bangers – work well with the tragicomic tone of the film. But the picture’s main asset is O’Sullivan’s perceptive writing: the quality of the screenplay shines throughout but there are several knockout scenes. A confrontation between Helen and Barbara, as Helen flees an agonising high school variety show, is beautifully judged and impeccably acted. A scene between Minnie and the drama teacher Mr. Murdaugh (David Hyde Pierce) has a rare wisdom and emotional honesty. Minnie’s tentative steps towards a relationship with Kat (Iman Vellani) culminate in an adorably gauche first kiss.

Most potent of all is the juxtaposition of Helen’s wrenching visit to a parents’ support group with a sequence in which Minnie, hungover and at work with her veterinarian mother, comforts an elderly dog which is about to be euthanised. The laughs and the tears – and there are plenty of both in the picture – are fully and honestly earned.