Netflix Movie All We Had

Yesterday I watched a movie on Netflix entitled “All We Had”. Katie Holmes both starred in and directed the movie. It is based on the 2014 novel by Annie Weatherwax.

The film also stars Stefania LaVie Owen (Ruthie), Luke Wilson, Richard Kind, Mark Consuelos, Judy Greer, and Eve Lindley.

Set during the financial crisis that occurred in 2008, a single mother and her teenage daughter find a new home in a small Midwestern town.

Mother/Daughter Team:

As the daughter, Ruthie, narrates from time to time, her mother looks for love in all the wrong places. They tend to end up running away while the boyfriend is gone and heading to the highway for parts unknown.

Ruthie says her mother doesn’t believe in maps. She just follows the signs and they end up where they end up, and then sometimes stay awhile.

Driving down the highway, Rita (Katie Holmes) asks her 14-year-old daughter where Harvard is. Ruthie tells her Boston. So this time they are headed for Boston.

But their car breaks down long before they get there. After paying the bill for that repair, they have very little left.

They find a diner to eat breakfast, then sneak out without paying their bill. However, life has other plans for them. The car now will only drive in reverse.

The Diner:

So they go back inside and apologize. The owner (Richard Kind) gives Rita a job waitressing alongside his transgender niece, Pam.

Pam lives behind the diner in an RV and yearns to move to NYC to become a star.

Rita tells Ruthie they will save up their money and head back to the highway, but that dream gets farther and farther away.

For a time, Rita is the girlfriend of a sleazy real estate developer (Mark Consuelas) who guides her into buying a rundown house. She signs on all the dotted lines because she trusts him. And that trust is misguided.

The mother/daughter duo are quite close, as they’ve really only had each other. They tag-team shoplift and camp out in their beat-up car out of necessity.

A Mother Who Makes Bad Decisions:

But then, Rita just tends to make bad decisions.

Rita finally finds love with a local dentist who almost threw up on her in the diner. He is a grieving alcoholic who lost his wife and seeks the answers to life at the bottom of a bottle.

Once he’s ensconced in AA, he goes back to the diner to tell Rita about it. And soon Rita is attending the meetings as well, both trying to appease Ruthie and provide her with a better life.

It’s often tough out there for a single mother and her teenage daughter with no one to turn to in an economically devastated landscape.

“All We Had,” Katie Holmes’ directorial debut.