The protagonist of "A Country Called Home" is the deceased man's daughter. She left her father as soon as she was able to do so, and now she has come to Texas from her home in Los Angeles to lay to rest the man she has spent most of her life hating.
The movie also throws in a transgender singing cowboy who, in his first scene, gets a beer bottle thrown at his head for daring to try to entertain people at a local dive bar. Continuing the theme of people slowly but surely killing themselves, the troubadour's mother, whose first appearance is in a hospital bed suffering from a diabetic coma, is eating her way to an early death on account of a diet consisting mainly of unhealthy food.
The easy criticism here is that the screenplay by director Anna Axster (her debut feature) and Jim Beggarly provides too many characters, but that's not quite right. It's clear that Axster and Beggarly have put some thought into how these characters are connected in ways that go beyond the informal familial bonds that tie them together.
Ellie (Imogen Poots) is the daughter of the deceased patriarch. She hasn't seen or spoken to her father in years, and her older brother (Shea Whigham) has all but written off their old man. In his view, their father is dead, but "they just haven't gotten around to burying him yet" (the movie eventually reveals why his children despise him, although it's not too much of a surprise). When her dad's "wife" Amanda (Mary McCormack) calls to let her know that her father has died, Ellie travels to Texas to take care of the funeral arrangements.
There, she meets her unofficial stepmother, a woman who seems perfectly polite and accommodating, until she is confronted with even the slightest inconvenience to her daily routine of heavy drinking. Her son Jack (Ryan Bingham) tries to keep the family afloat, and it has become more difficult since his mother and Ellie's father moved in with Jack and his son Tommy (Presley Jack Bowen).
Through Amanda, the screenplay provides an idea of what Ellie's father might have been like, and by way of Jack, Axster and Beggarly offer a glimpse of what Ellie's life could have been like if she hadn't left her own family situation. Jack is essentially trapped by obligation in the same way Ellie was when she was younger. There's something oppressively cyclical about these relationships. The connections stand on their own, which makes it unfortunate that Jack eventually becomes a potential romantic interest for Ellie, who has an uncaring boyfriend (Josh Helman) at home. The development undermines the more interesting thematic connection between the two characters.
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