Arliss Ryan

Ten Photos Arliss Ryan

When widowed Fern Randall passes away in her senior living apartment, she leaves behind a lifetime of unlabeled photos and two bitterly estranged daughters. Claire is a university librarian, devoted to her career, her husband and their two grown sons. Maya is divorced and bouncing between bad boyfriends, low-paying jobs and bouts with alcohol. Along with their widely divergent personalities, Claire and Maya are further separated by a fourteen-year gap in their ages. Then Maya is involved in a fatal car accident, and in a drunken haze she calls Claire to bail her out of jail. Except Claire can't answer-she's suffered a brain stem stroke resulting in Locked-in Syndrome, a devastating condition that leaves her paralyzed and speechless in a rehab hospital, reduced to blinking out her thoughts on an alphabet board. It falls to Claire's husband, Brian, a gifted violinist and professor of music, to rescue Maya and take her in. Overwhelmed with caring for his critically ill wife, Brian must now assume the added burden of his rebellious sister-in-law. Thus begins a volatile triangle, further exacerbated by the fact that Fern has put Claire in charge of Maya's inheritance. Then Maya brings batches of Fern's photos to the hospital to entertain Claire, and the pictures force them to examine their mother's life and their own fractured relationship. Snapshots of their father Stan bowling, of Claire and Fern in a home ec class, of Maya strutting in a scarlet tutu have the power to alternately disrupt and heal. But a humiliating encounter between Maya and her ex-husband, Troy, leads her to walk out on Claire. With Maya struggling to stay sober and Claire weighing whether to continue her locked-in life, their mother's photos may be their last chance to reconcile.