When a New Age healer learns her estranged wild-hearted mother is dying, she stages a last-ditch family intervention disguised as a sound bath ceremony only to learn that she's the one who isn't really living.
Synopsis
Kathleen's Sound Bath is a darkly comedic, emotionally raw feature-length drama centered on a strained mother-daughter relationship set against the backdrop of alternative wellness culture, impending death, and the unfinished business of the past.
Kathleen, a spiritual wellness leader in her mid-thirties, facilitates sound baths and healing workshops designed to help others process trauma. But beneath her polished, ethereal exterior lies a woman desperate for validation, especially from the one person who refuses to give it: her estranged, acid-tongued mother, Barbara. Recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, Barbara chooses to discontinue treatment and embrace her remaining time on her own irreverent terms, with Bloody Marys, gambling, and a casual relationship with a much younger sex worker.
As Kathleen attempts to reconnect with Barbara, she becomes consumed by the belief that a Sound Bath intervention could save her mother, or at least give their fractured relationship closure. Her plan, however, involves recruiting her skeptical stepsister Darlene, her emotionally distant father James, and his genteel wife Harriet, all of whom bring their own baggage to the table.
What follows is a collision of old wounds, spiritual bypassing, awkward forced intimacy, a kidnapped cow, and a raw reckoning with the past, which culminates during Kathleen’s wildly botched healing intervention. As the facade of control crumbles, Kathleen learns that true healing doesn’t come from the crystal bowls, but from the raw, unscripted moments of brutal honesty and unexpected connection she tumbles into with her mother.
With sharp dialogue, tonal shifts between poignancy and hilarity, and rich multigenerational characters, Kathleen’s Sound Bath explores how people reckon with mortality, identity, and the wounds we inherit and inflict. It’s a story about mothers and daughters trying to understand one another before it’s too late, and the beautiful mess that happens when we let go of our attempts at control and let the truth in no matter how difficult it is.
