But Kyra’s situation grows even direr when her mother dies. The moment is powerful in its silence and stillness. Dosunmu pushes into the living room from the hallway ever so steadily as Kyra walks in and realizes her mother has stopped breathing in her recliner. She carefully reaches over and turns off the oxygen tank. She doesn’t know whether to sit or stand. She’s stunned, understandably—all of which Pfeiffer conveys in the space of a single shot.
The awkward small talk Kyra makes to the few people who attend the funeral indicates just how little of a life she’s had outside of her mother and these walls. Now, she has to figure out how to hold onto the apartment without any income.
But just when you suspect “Where is Kyra?” is going to be too bleak in a one-note, stoic way, Kyra lets it all out once she gets back home, and the overwhelming sense of being totally alone pours out of her. Then, finally, comes the title in all caps, giant white letters on a black screen, yanking you out of that melancholy and signaling a change.
“Where Is Kyra?” becomes a more actively stressful movie as Kyra resorts to increasingly dangerous schemes to stay afloat. You know she’s in bad shape when you can hear the sound of her scraping coins out of the bottom of her purse to afford a drink at the local dive bar. But things gets worse, even as they seem to get vaguely better with the introduction of Kiefer Sutherland’s Doug, who’s sitting a couple of stools down at the bar and also happens to be a neighbor in her mom’s building.
Doug gives her rare chance to forge a connection with someone, and while she’s initially resistant, it’s obvious she needs the human contact. Soon they’re doing shots, and you can imagine where it goes from there—and yet their relationship remains a mystery, even as it evolves. It’s unclear whether Kyra truly cares for Doug—who is decent and kind and also struggling economically, although not as drastically as she is—or she just craves the company.
There’s a great shot of the two of them leaning against the wall at a building-wide gathering, drinking beers together. Dosunmu places them slightly off-center in the frame and shoots them at a distance, amid wood paneling and sparse white lights. In holding that shot for a while, he makes you want to lean in to see and hear them as they fumble through half-hearted attempts at flirting.
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