A Mouthful of Air

Name: A Mouthful of Air
Director: Amy Koppelman
Released: 2021

Amy Koppelman

2021

Synopsis

Julie is a new mom and children's book author, who escapes into the bright Crayola-colored world of her creation in order to leave behind the darkness caused by her post-partum depression.

Your Movie Library

Cast

Recommendations

80
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
There is a delicate touch deployed here, and not only with Julie, but those surrounding her. Depression, Koppleman seems to be saying, is not a one-person battle. It can swallow everyone in a victim’s orbit.
70
Time
A Mouthful of Air makes it past those potential flaws on the strength of Seyfried’s performance. To look at her face—to watch as her delight in her son shifts almost imperceptibly into a private hell—is enough.
67
IndieWire
Koppelman’s attempts to do too much are easy to forgive in a film that often seems to be doing so little. The same is true of the writer/director’s rookie clumsiness, which is offset not only by Amanda Seyfried’s expert performance in the lead role, but also — and even more importantly — by Koppelman’s own unwavering conviction about the limits of self-expression.
67
Original-Cin
It’s a beautiful-looking film. The characters treat each other with respect, and I’m sure that there are people out there who will appreciate that the movie, addresses a tough issue, without being too taxing or challenging. At the same time, the movie’s cautious approach short-changes the story and the issue.
63
Movie Nation
It does a good enough job of giving us a helpless outsider-looking-in view of this foundering form of postpartum depression, making us sympathize if never quite helping us understand how this happened to Jules and what those who love her can do — beyond chemicals — to save her.
60
The Hollywood Reporter
Though it’s not without cinematic touches and affecting, sometimes harrowing moments, and even with a convincingly fragile and unmoored Amanda Seyfried at its center, the drama is often hampered by an instructive sensibility that gives it the air of a feature-length PSA.
40
TheWrap
The wispy depression drama A Mouthful of Air floats more weighty ideas about mental illness and suicidal ideation than its episodic narrative can accommodate.
40
Los Angeles Times
For a film so grounded in the real-life issue, the movie doesn’t work to make its characters feel human or its world feel real, blunting the emotional impact it could have had.