Review: On Parole and in Love in ‘Outside In’

“You’re not free yet, not by a long shot,” an unsmiling parole officer tells Chris (Jay Duplass), near the beginning of Lynn Shelton’s new feature, “Outside In.” Newly released after serving 20 years for an only vaguely specified crime, Chris is pushing 40 and uncertain how to reclaim a life he left while still a teenager. His small section of rural Washington has barely changed; whether he can still fit into it is another question.

Freedom, and its negotiation, is Shelton’s subject this time out (she and Duplass wrote the story together), and the parole officer’s admonition could apply to any one of the characters with whom Chris interacts. Chief among these is Carol (Edie Falco), Chris’ former high school teacher and the prime instrument of his early release. Unhappily married to a cold man who disdains her volunteer work with prison inmates, Carol is unprepared for Chris’ romantic expectations. Immature and inexperienced, Chris can’t quite grasp that the feelings he nurtured while inside might not be shared.

Exploring big questions through small, intimate moments, “Outside In” is a love story that prioritizes patience and pragmatism over passion. Slowly, Carol is noticing the bars of her own prison, the stultifying stasis of her life and the emotional desert of her marriage. That vacuum has alienated her teenage daughter, Hildy (a marvelous Kaitlyn Dever), who escapes by making fantastical art in an abandoned house. Seeing it, Chris recognizes a lonely kindred spirit, and a friendship begins — one that Carol is not entirely comfortable with.

In a movie whose greatest tension comes from wondering whether Chris will violate his parole by drinking a beer, the actors need to be compelling. Easily clearing that bar, Falco gives Carol a gentle kindness and the emotional intelligence to transform Chris’ ardor into a catalyst. And anyone who’s been watching the Amazon series “Transparent” knows that Duplass has a knack for playing fragile, wounded masculinity. He understands how to make a weapon out of guilelessness, and he uses it to make Chris so disarmingly bashful it’s easy to miss how unreliable he might be.

Shot in warm pastel tones and drizzly, mouse-colored light, “Outside In” is, like its characters, a little washed out. It’s also less comedic in tone than most of Shelton’s previous features, the slow, straightforward style making it appear uneventful. Yet even if Chris and Carol’s most exciting encounter involves more time in a bowling alley than a bedroom, their steadily shifting affection seems a small miracle of resilience and hope.

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Additional Information:

‘Outside In’

Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes.