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Duty Free review – mother-love doc is a heartwarming dose of grit and sass
Sian-Pierre Regis begins filming his mother Rebecca at her lowest ebb, sacked and homeless at 75. But the tables turn for this woman of determination
Just in time for Mother’s Day comes this absolute heartwarmer from the American journalist turned documentary maker Sian-Pierre Regis, about ageism, pensioner poverty and the gig economy, but mostly about his brilliant, wonderful mother. It begins in Boston, when Liverpool-born Rebecca Danigelis is suddenly fired from her live-in housekeeping manager job at a fancy hotel, where she has worked for decades. The 75-year-old is handed two weeks’ pay and an eviction notice to vacate the apartment at the top of the hotel, where she raised her two sons as a single mother. Regis, a 32-year-old freelance journalist, begins filming.
His early recordings on iPhone capture his mother’s total despair. She has $600 in the bank, having cashed her savings to put him through college. No one is replying to her job applications. She feels invisible – though she’s anything but, with her platinum white hair pinned into a chic updo and immaculate makeup. As her son says, she’s a woman of “grit, sass and determination”. At her lowest point, he asks her to write a bucket list of things she could never do because she was always working. He raises $60,000 on Kickstarter and together they tick off her list.
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