| Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
A mother and son take an amiable if ambling road trip in Ramzi Bashour’s debut feature. Blue Caftan star Lubna Alzabal plays Layal, an Arabic professor and single mum whose temper is on a short fuse, not least because she’s recently switched smoking for clementine eating. Nicely established in the film’s opening minutes as she locks horns with a lazy student, Layal finds the latest unexpected trigger is the news that her teenage son Daniel (Daniel Zolghadri, a fine actor but a bit old for this role at the age of 26), is injured in an incident in which he also hit someone with his hockey stick – an expellable offence.
The only option for him to finish school is to go to live with his estranged father in California, which prompts the pair to set off on a long distance road trip west. The presence of Max Walker-Silverman (A Love Song, Rebuilding) as a producer signposts the low-key nature of the action that ensues and while Bashour has a solid handle on the mother-son dynamic and has an ear for low-key humour, he doesn’t reach the emotional complexity of Walker-Silverman’s work.
As mother and son move across the various midwest landscapes – shot with attention by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo – the trip is punctuated by diner and motel stop-offs and Layal’s calls to her family in Beirut where her own mother has had an accident, as the bond between them is inevitably tested. It’s not that the journey is unpleasant but the stakes are very low and the lack of tension leads it to feel overstretched as a result. Both actors put in sensitive performances but the characters feel underdeveloped. Dale Dickey lifts the film enormously as a mid-section stop-off point, taking the pair to some hot springs and casually teaching Layal a thing or two about connection, but once the mother and son hit the road again, it feels as though the film drops back once again into a cruising speed.
Once or twice there are ideas that could have warranted further development, particularly a moment when Daniel is practising his chat up lines in a mirror, hinting at facets of his character that otherwise go unexplored. Once they reach his father (Gabe Fazio), the action again threatens to stall, mainly due to the repetition of story beats. There’s a good, thoughtful mid-length film wrapped up inside Hot Water, that struggles to go the extra distance.
Reviewed on: 27 Jan 2026
