'Mouse' Review: A Tender Coming-of-Age Drama About Grief and Friendship

Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson's Mouse, which premiered in the Panorama section of the 2026 Berlinale, reaches theaters on November 6. The film is the directing duo's follow-up to their 2024 feature Ghostlight.

The story opens on the last day of junior high for Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) and her best friend Callie (Chloe Coleman). On a late-June morning, the two girls blast Michelle Branch's 2002 hit "All You Wanted" in the car. The review in The Film Stage calls it "a coming-of-age drama with the lightest touch."

Who are Minnie and Callie?

The film is set in the suburbs of Little Rock, Arkansas. Callie is the popular girl who wows at drama club and dates the cutest guy. Minnie, by contrast, is good at math. Coleman plays Callie with what the review describes as "luminosity and vigor," a counterpoint to Kupferer's timidity. Others comment on the bizarre power imbalance between the friends—a tease here, a snipe there—but the film refuses to simplify teenage friendship down to logic and merit.

What changes everything?

A terrible accident occurs early in the film. The rest of Mouse follows Minnie as she imagines her life anew, without her best friend. The review notes the film "treads lightly in the steps of loss and grief," portraying a pathless, introverted teenager robbed of her mirror image. When the journey of grief is never a straight road, guidance can take its own wrong turns and detours.

How does the film treat women across generations?

The review finds Mouse special for its attention to women's friendship and kinship across generations. Minnie's single mother Barbara (Tara Mullen) is scattered, overworked and stretched thin; her messy home holds warmth, with rescue dogs and a foster baby boy who gets more attention than Minnie. Helen (Sophie Okonedo) is Callie's stay-at-home mother, who plays piano and keeps her affluent home meticulously. The film's most treasured scenes sit at the intersection of Helen and Minnie—a kid who'd rather consider herself motherless and a childless mother, growing closer as they remember Callie.

O'Sullivan's script acknowledges the gaps in age and role between the two headstrong characters rather than merely highlighting their similarities. A "grieving parents" support group, a school talent show held in memoriam, and a first crush in the face of Kat (Iman Vellani) all give Helen and Minnie chances to connect through pain.

The review's central verdict: Mouse enacts the sore truth that everyone's grief is different, and that may be the filmmakers' most loving gesture—loosening the consoling embrace and allowing another more room to breathe through the tears. Audiences can judge for themselves when the film opens on November 6.