Blue Jay

 Directed by Alexandre Lehmann | Written by Mark Duplass

There’s something inexplicably haunting about black-and-white cinema. Every shadow, every pause, every unsaid word gains weight. In a world where films often shout to be heard, Blue Jay chooses to whisper, and somehow, it’s louder than most. The monochrome palette is not just an aesthetic choice here; it’s an emotional lens, inviting us to enter a memory, and the present-day blurs like fog on a cold morning.

A slow-burning drama about two former high school sweethearts: Jim (Mark Duplass) and Amanda (Sarah Paulson), who run into each other by chance in their hometown after 22 years. What begins as a casual reunion at the supermarket stretches into them spending an entire day together unraveling memories, regrets, laughter, and unhealed wounds. Throughout their conversations, we piece together their shared past, the lives they chose after parting ways, and the ache of what might’ve been. There’s no dramatic climax, no orchestral swell, just two people trying to make sense of an old love, quietly asking: what do we do with all that history? 

The movie thrives on subtlety: the loaded silences, the sideways glances, and the smallest gestures that speak louder than monologues ever could. 

One of my favorite scenes has to be the one where Amanda picks through a box of jellybeans and softly remarks, “You left me all the pink and purple ones,” to which Jim, without hesitation, replies, “Yeah, they’re your favorites.” 

It’s such a small, throwaway exchange, and yet, it contains everything. In those few words, we feel the weight of familiarity, of the kind of love that never fully dissolves. These are people who haven’t spoken in years, and yet, he remembers her favorite jellybean flavors. That’s the essence of Blue Jay: the deep old love carves into us, the parts of ourselves we leave behind with someone else.

Later, Amanda stumbles upon Jim’s old journal and reads aloud a line so fragile it almost breaks the air around them: “My lips said hello, my friend, but my heart said, hello, my future. I don’t even know myself anymore… Jim has been ripped in half. I’m so happy to bleed for… there is Amanda,” 

This is where we understand the emotional magnitude of their history. Their heartbreak wasn’t casual. It was formative. These small moments reveal the film’s beating heart: the way people can carry each other like unfinished stories. What happens when we revisit those stories, years later, with adult eyes and tired hearts?

Nostalgia is rarely loud. It’s not the fireworks of first love or the chaos of a breakup; it’s quieter than that. It’s the lump in your throat when you hear a familiar song, the way certain places smell like memories, the way someone once knew exactly which jellybean flavors you loved and remembered even after decades apart. 

Blue Jay doesn’t just invite you into the past, it wraps you in it, gently, without judgment, and lets you sit in the softness of what once was.

There’s a quiet vulnerability that unfolds when Amanda admits, “I don’t know why I feel so embarrassed taking them (anti-depressants)… It’s probably because there’s nothing wrong with my life. I should be happy. But there’s this sadness, and I don’t know where it comes from.” 

It's one of the most emotionally honest moments in the film, a reminder that sadness doesn’t always come with a reason. Sometimes it lingers, unnamed, like grief without a grave. And it’s in the company of someone who once loved you without conditions that the truth becomes easier to say out loud.

At its core, Blue Jay is a love story, but not in the traditional sense. It’s a story of people who once belonged to each other, and who now, in their broken and beautiful adult selves, are learning to forgive the past, to honor it, and let it rest. It reminds us that some connections don’t need a future to be meaningful. That high school love, first love, forgotten love, they don’t vanish. They live inside us, shaping who we become, quietly influencing the way we love, lose, and heal.

And maybe that’s the true gift of nostalgia: not just in remembering, but in recognizing ourselves again through someone else’s memory of us. You may not always get the ending you imagined, but sometimes knowing that someone remembers you is its own kind of happy ending. 

Because if you really think about it, the light from what we had doesn’t go out. It travels with us. And sometimes, on the quietest days, it still shines so bright that you can almost feel it.