Plot Summary
Keir O’Donnell’s debut feature, ‘Marmalade,’ tells the story of a young man named Baron who ends up in prison after robbing stores with a freewheeling woman named Marmalade.
Baron recounts the story of his criminal past to his cellmate Otis. Flashbacks take us into this story and we learn more about Baron and his relationship to Marmalade.
However, all is not as it seems. While Baron appears to be an unwilling participant in the crimes, the truth is far different. After several twists and turns, he escapes prison. Does the film end with him as a free man? And who is Baron really?
Let’s take a closer look at the film.
Who is Baron?
On the surface, Baron appears to be somebody who wouldn’t hurt a fly. He works at the postal service, is kind to those around him, and is a doting son to his mother who we learn is dying.
Baron needs money to pay for his mother’s medication. After losing his job, he is in desperate need of a way to raise funds. Enter Marmalade, a young woman he becomes intimately involved with, who has the perfect solution to his problem.
Who is Marmalade?
We don’t learn a lot about Marmalade – for good reason – but from the information we pick up in the first half of the film, she is somebody who knows her way around a gun. We also learn a little about her difficult past in the foster care system where she was apparently abused by the man taking care of her.
Marmalade isn’t who she says she is, as we learn later. Baron isn’t quite the man he says he is either. But before we get the rug pulled away from us, the film follows Baron as he’s led into a life of crime by Marmalade. He goes along with her as he needs to make money to pay for his mother’s pills, although he’s not as comfortable robbing stores as she is. Or so we are led to believe!
Who is Otis?
Otis appears to be a hardened inmate of the prison. He’s also an expert in prison breaks, or so he says. Baron is keen to get out of prison so he thinks Otis may be his ticket out of there. He offers Otis $25,000 – the money Marmalade has in a secret place – in return for an escape plan.
But all is not as it seems. Otis isn’t a prisoner at all. He’s actually an FBI agent who coordinated Baron’s arrest so he could get information from him in prison. Otis has been chasing Marmalade for quite some time and he thinks Baron is the person who can tell him her whereabouts.
Does Baron escape prison?
Other FBI agents are working with Otis in the prison and together, they orchestrate a plan to make Baron thinks he has escaped.
With the aid of another agent, Otis is able to disguise himself as a prison laundry worker. He then transports Baron, via a laundry cart, to the prison’s exit.
When a prison officer, who is unaware of Otis’s real identity, questions him at the doors, Otis loses sight of Baron. The plan was for him to ‘escape’ with Baron and consequently find Marmalade’s whereabouts.
However, the prison officer disrupted that plan. As such, Baron was able to get away in a nearby car and Otis had to resort to Plan B – following Otis in another car from behind.
Does Otis find Marmalade?
Well, here’s the thing! There is no such person as Marmalade. It turns out that Baron lied about her character in his story to Otis. In truth, Baron is the person behind the crimes he committed, so he’s not quite the innocent we expected after all.
Baron leads Otis on quite the goose chase, first visiting his mother’s grave and then an ice cream parlour which is where he hung out with Marmalade – or so he told Otis.
When Baron leaves the parlour, Otis thinks he has caught up with him. But when he stops the getaway car he realises the driver is an ice cream employee who Baron has switched places with.
When Otis returns to Baron’s mother’s grave, he discovers his mother isn’t buried there after all. He also finds a jar of marmalade on the gravestone, which Baron left there to tease him.
Does Otis catch Baron?
In a flashback scene, we see Baron looking at a newspaper cutting relating to his bank robberies. On it is a picture of Otis, so Baron already knew he was an FBI agent.
So, why did Baron let himself get involved with Otis? The plotting is a little hazy but it appears he allowed himself to get arrested so he could then lead Otis to Baron Pharmaceutical, the company that manufactures his mother’s medication.
The CEO of the drug company turns out to be the abusive foster father that Marmalade referred to earlier. Though in truth, he was Baron’s foster father. Otis recognises him from Baron’s description and has him arrested.
As you may have worked out by now, it’s a strange coincidence that Baron has the same name as a drug company. It turns out that Baron isn’t his real name at all, though we don’t discover what his actual name is.
The name of Baron’s mother, which he said was Eda Lamram, isn’t her real name either. If you look at her ‘name’ again, you’ll realize it’s marmalade spelt backwards.
Otis doesn’t catch Baron. Instead, he meets somebody at a travel agency during his pursuit of the young criminal. This person gives Otis a bus ticket to Jamaica that Baron has left for him. The ticket is significant as Otis’ mother lives in Jamaica, so Baron is giving him the opportunity to see her.
At the end of the film, we see Baron with his mother (who isn’t dead after all), at a nursing home. Presumably, he was able to pay for her residency with the money he stole. We also see him delivering medication to other patients.
It can be assumed that Otis gave up his search for Baron and visited Jamaica. As such, Baron, as far as we know, remained a free man!
Read More: Marmalade Movie Review