Based on her memoir ‘Daddy’, ‘By the Roots’ is an autobiographical movie by Madison Young.  Directed, written, and co-produced by Young, the movie also counts Ally Sheedy, who appears briefly in a mid-movie flashback (‘The Breakfast Club’, ‘WarGames’), as one of its executive producers.

By day,  our lead Tina runs a successful gallery in San Francisco, and by night she is a sexual revolutionary engaging in a sub/dom BDSM relationship with her longtime partner that includes the extensive use of ropework. Tina’s professional and personal lives intersect as her art and sexuality meet in an early scene depicting a performance piece in which she’s strung up Shibari-style in the Castro while Alotta Boutte delivers a beautiful, flawless performance of ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’.

Contrasting her life in San Francisco with that of her family home in Ohio, the film opens with flashbacks to Madison’s childhood, showing her initially close bond with her father that disintegrates as he comes to leave the family. Her mother is a conflicted character who appears a deeply troubled woman and who veers between a pragmatic acceptance of her husband’s departure and a simmering, occasionally inappropriate volatility.

The time period for the movie was a little unclear, but I gathered from the use of Blackberries and with marriage equality being referenced as not being a thing yet that the modern scenes were set in the early 2000s.

While living her life of freedom and exploration in San Francisco, Tina’s peace is broken as she’s guilt-tripped back home to celebrate her mother’s birthday with the added threat that her childhood home is about to be sold.

An interesting contrast in Madison’s story when her queerness is challenged from both sides; in San Francisco, one of her friends accuses her of abandoning her queerness for ‘Heterotown’; in Ohio, her homophobic uncle congratulates her on finding a boyfriend, her ‘dominant’,  James, who has accompanied her on this visit.

I wanted to connect with this piece more than I did. The subject matter and tone give the sense of a ‘Pillion’ / ‘Uncle Frank’ crossover for women, and it’s certainly a vastly underrepresented aspect of the queer community. However, I found some of the actors’ delivery to be stagey and much of the dialogue and scene set-ups to be clunky and contrived, such as a bizarre ‘When Harry Met Sally’ moment in a café. I’m also sure Tina is referred to as Madison at one point, and I couldn’t tell if that was a mistake or a choice.

One of the themes of this movie is about connecting and coming to terms with one’s past, and it does this extremely well. This is a beautifully shot movie with some staggering imagery, particularly in the Ohio scenes. Additionally, the occasional narration from Tina is poetic and beautifully written.

The actresses playing Tina as a girl and teenager delivered impeccable performances, as did adult Tina as played by Emily Robinson (‘Transparent’) and Brant Daugherty (‘Fifty Shades Freed’, ‘Pretty Little Liars’) as her partner James.

Over the film’s closing credits, we see and hear from the real Madison. I felt that I could watch a whole movie with her telling her own story without the narrative hook of the family, which I’m not convinced was needed.

Overall, I feel that is an important piece of work from a little-heard voice that might work better as a powerful piece of theatre, maybe a monologue delivered by Madison herself.