A divorced funeral director swipes his way through diminishing prospects on Tinder. An employee prepares his father for a final goodbye. And a business dealing in the dead faces escalating demand as a result of the pandemic. Patrick Ginnetty and Bowie Alexander’s darkly humorous film offers a different perspective on what life was like as the Covid crisis reached a critical point. Like so many other mortuaries in New York, the subject of Ginnetty and Alexander’s documentary is stretched to its limit, with all who work there challenged by the physical and emotional burden of their job. What makes Handle with Extreme Care stand out from other portraits of Covid-era films is the frankness by which it juxtaposes seismic events with people’s attempts to carry on with their lives.
"But the most poignant personal issue in the film affects Omar, the funeral home worker, whose personal life overlaps with his daily professional work of responding to the fallout of the pandemic when his father becomes seriously ill with COVID. Like many others, Omar heroically continued going about his job responding to the worst consequences of the virus even as those consequences played out in his own family." -Daily Beast
Citation
Main credits
Alexander, Bowie (filmmaker)
Ginnetty, Patrick (filmmaker)
Lapointe, Michael (film producer)
Other credits
Cinematography and editing, Bowie Alexander, Patrick Ginnetty.