‘Hot Water’ Review: Winning Road Drama Comes to Life in the Little Details

“Hot Water,” the gentle and ultimately winning road-trip dramedy from writer-director Ramzi Bashour, is a film of deceptive complexity. Following a mother and son as they drive across the country, it’s about strained yet still loving familial relationships, the way they’re impacted by generational histories, finding the language to speak to the ones we love the most, and whether the best path forward may require packing up the life you thought you knew to start all over again. 

While at face value this could sound simplistic or, even worse, cloying, “Hot Water” has surprising, often messy layers. It’s about simmering anger and disconnection as much as it is about love and redemption. Even as it falls into some familiar beats and stumbles through thorny ones, the film, like its characters, manages to keep moving forward despite its missteps. 

Perhaps most critically, it’s also about how annoying it is to transport a family member’s hockey equipment. How annoying is it? It’s so annoying that, if you were given the chance to do it, you may just want to fling it out of your car so as not to deal with it any longer.

This is precisely what the matriarch Layal (a magnificent and moving Lubna Azabal) does in a moment of frustration midway through the journey she is on with her son, Daniel (a delightfully deadpan Daniel Zolghad of last year’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”). The frustration is aimed at him and at the circumstances they’ve found themselves in, after a violent hockey-game fight got him kicked out of school and launched them on the cross-country road trip.

Their destination is Daniel’s father, Anton (Gabe Fazio), from whom Layal has separated and whom neither has seen in quite some time. The plan is for them to drive from Indiana to meet him in Colorado and then have Daniel travel the rest of the way with his father to finish high school in California. But, of course, unexpected complications arise that they’ll have to navigate together. 

All of this, while not particularly groundbreaking in terms of its narrative structure, comes to life in the little details. From the moment Azabal first appears, she’s already a richly formed and complex person who you feel could be a member of your own family. An Arabic professor who is trying to quit smoking, she’s compassionate and caring, though also capable of taking a student to task for trying to get a better grade than they deserve.

Daniel, on the other hand, is a more relaxed and go-with-the-flow teenager who is soon going to have to grow up, whether he is ready to or not. To see them growing closer as they approach the moment when they’ll have to say goodbye gives the film a growing sense of earned melancholy. Much like the Sundance breakout hit from a couple of years back, “A Real Pain,” there are moments of poetic and playful mirth that are delicately balanced with the reality that this trip must come to an end. 

“Hot Water” is not always measured in its pacing and often feels as if it’s hurrying to get to the next bit rather than letting certain scenes linger, but it has a strong core to build from. Though the film is populated by familiar shots of the open road giving way to the lonely motels and diners of America, the film doesn’t merely play the hits as cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo (who previously shot the 2022 gem “A Love Song”) finds more quietly mournful compositions in everything from the reflection of Layal in a television screen to Daniel sitting alone watching a video on his phone.

In one standout shot where the two rest atop the hood of their humble Subaru Outback, a meaningful moment of openness from Daniel only makes the scene hit home that much more. It’s these little moments that leap off the screen, even when not much of consequence is happening. There is a scene-stealing turn by an amusingly and believably weary young kid working reception at a motel, just as there is a quiet knockout of a scene with the great character actor Dale Dickey, who you only wish could stay a little bit longer.

Alas, the road beckons. 

Some twists and turns threaten to swerve into more standard clichés, but “Hot Water” always manages to keep pushing on thanks to the great work of Azabal and Zolghad. You completely believe them as mother and son who, while different in many ways, may be more similar than either fully realizes.

Even as the film isn’t above a more cheeky reveal in the conclusion, its prevailing grace comes from how the two outstanding performers bare the souls of their characters. When we return to the road with them one last time for a bittersweet final drive, their chemistry ensures you’d travel along with them just about anywhere. Yes, even with a bulky bag of hockey equipment.

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