‘Hot Water’ Review: The American Road Movie Tradition Gets a Cross-Cultural Twist

Layal (Lubna Azabal) seems to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown. A college professor of Arabic who just quit smoking, she has no patience, her students’ incompetence infuriates her, she tries to relax while listening to meditation programs in her car, her mother in Beirut has fallen and become bedridden. As if this wasn’t enough, her teenage son gets expelled from school for hitting another boy with a hockey stick during a match. And thus “Hot Water,” Ramzi Bashour’s sincere and offbeat comedy, sets its premise. What follows is a road movie as mother and son fight and bond and, unsurprisingly, manage to find their way back to loving and accepting each other. 

With this film, Bashour modernizes that traditional American genre: the road movie. When Layal’s ex (Gabe Fazio) offers to house their son Daniel (Daniel Zolghadri) in Santa Cruz so that he can graduate high school, the mother and son duo gets that chance at hitting the road. And off they go from Indiana to California. While Bashour treads familiar territory, his characters are different from those who usually inhabit these kinds of movies. Besides being of different generations, Layal is a Lebanese transplant, her son is American. That culture clash is mined by “Hot Water” for both comedy and pathos. Layal and Daniel grew up in different environments and with a different set of rules and societal obligations, but that’s also what ultimately makes them understand each other. 

Bashour is interested in small moments of interaction that may not always carry much meaning in of themselves, but cumulatively they might just lead to catharsis. Layla is wound up and always worried, Daniel is more relaxed and seems unbothered. But Layal is also sharply funny, calling Las Vegas “Like Dubai, bullshit in the middle of the desert.” Daniel shows softer sides of himself as the angry teenage facade he hides under is removed, and a warm, sensible young person is revealed. 

The film relies on a few quirky characters that Layal and Daniel meet along the way. Sundance regular Dale Dickey appears as an earthy woman who likes to give long hugs, and soak naked in Colorado’s springs — the hot water of the title. The character is written as an eccentric but powerful bearer of wisdom. In a lesser actor’s hands it would have been just a screenplay convenience, but Dickey infuses it with enough warmth and composure to make it realistic. They also meet a drifter who needs a ride. What ensues is funny and results in him yelling at them “You are not good people.” Bashour seems to want to get to the opposite of that statement by the end of the movie. The trip is bumpy but he does arrive at a satisfying answer. 

Besides this hitchhiker, the road Layal and Daniel travel on is rather empty. There’s nary even another car on these roads other than their Subaru, as if the America they traverse has very few inhabitants. What resonates is Layal’s connection with her mother and sister back in Lebanon. Heard only as voices on the phone, they add context to the lead character that makes the audience understand her motivations and hopes for the future. The voices on the phone soothe and worry her in equal measure. The longing for her past life and the pining for a place to call home give Azabal a multitude of different emotional states to play. Coupled with her incisive humor, “Hot Water” becomes a showcase for this veteran Canadian actor who most audiences might remember from leading Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar nominated 2010 film, “Incendies.” Zolghadri’s mellower performance also resonates, even if his character is not given as much context as Azabal’s.

“Hot Water” is carried through by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo’s command of the light and atmosphere. His camera shows not just the enormity and beauty of the American terrain, but the confused feelings Layla and Daniel are trying to hide. The film’s rhythm is languid, its emotions mostly quiet. The few outbursts from both leads only emphasize the serenity of the rest of the movie. Bashour builds the narrative little piece by little piece. He’s asking the audience to trust that this story is going somewhere special. Not all of these moments land with an emotional punch, but enough do. There are instances when the audience might get impatient or question the confessions of Layal and Daniel as contrivances. However, those who stick with this mother-son team till the end will be rewarded with emotional beats nearing catharsis.