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But the characters do, sharing a private language of family dysfunction and unexpressed anguish.

“For Black women there was a belief, probably unexpressed, that there was only room for one of us,” Davis recalled.

“Tótem” captures the flow of an imperfect family in which what’s left unexpressed engenders conflict between people who otherwise deeply love each other.

These aren’t absences, not deaths, but they nevertheless carry the risk of leaving questions unanswered, love unexpressed and truths unsaid.

Perhaps personal resentments had accumulated, unexpressed but still powerful.