When family friend Jimmy Fallon shows up to sing Kate McGarrigle’s “The Swimming Song,” he brings up what any viewer of this documentary has been thinking since the first minutes: The amount of musical talent in McGarrigle’s family is extraordinary.
McGarrigle was a Canadian singer-songwriter who mostly performed with her sister Anna. She married Loudon Wainwright III and had two children, Rufus and Martha, who grew up formidable singers in their own right. In Lian Lunson’s documentary, it’s clear that McGarrigle was also a genuinely beloved figure.
The film sprinkles in the reminiscences of those who knew her, but concentrates on footage of a memorial concert at New York’s Town Hall in May 2011. It is a lengthy movie that is very much for people who walk in as McGarrigle fans. There’s virtually no biographical content. The songs stick very much to one plaintive folk-pop style, and if that is not your passion, the flood of concert footage becomes wearing fairly early on.
There are a handful of moments to entrance a non-fan. When the musicians and singers assemble to sing “Proserpina,” the last song McGarrigle ever wrote, with its haunting refrain (“Come home to Mama”), the effect is transcendent. And Rufus and Martha discussing their mother’s last minutes on earth — well, bring tissues.