What happens when a woman crosses the border from "strong" to totally self-obsessed? Most urgently, what happens to the children who she is meant to nurture?
That's the question at the heart of the remarkable story of White Oleander. I haven't read the novel, by Janet Finch, but it has become the basis of a powerful and moving film.
The film charts the survival course of the young teenager (15 at the film's start) Astrid Magnussen, played here with touching effect by Alison Lohman. It's a pretty tough course. Her mother Ingrid (a beautifully delineated performance by Michelle Pfeiffer) uses family love as a tool for emotional control and domination.
And when Ingrid goes to prison for the murder of her boyfriend Barry (played almost invisibly by a mis-cast Billy Connolly), the attempted domination becomes even more intense.
"My mother was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen... she was also the most dangerous." |
This woman is just as dangerous behind bars as she was when still free.
While her daughter is moved from foster-home to foster-home, Ingrid is second-guessing her every move, and trying to influence her with her own homegrown brand of Nitzschean philosophy, where her 'Superwoman' replaces Nitzsche's addle-pated 'Superman' theory.
Astrid adopts protective mimicry along the way of this survival course. Fostered by Yuppies, she becomes for a time a mini-Yuppie. Fostered by religious freaks, she in turn succumbs to superstition. And when fostered by an ex-Iron Curtain mama who has adopted scunge alternative capitalism with a vengeance, she in turn goes scunge, turning to glam pseudo-Gothic. The mimicry is only so deep - underneath is a young woman trying to refine and retain her own identity under the hardest of pressures.
Alison Lohman and Michelle Pfeiffer are not the only outstanding actresses along the way. Two of the foster-mums deliver rending performances; Robin Wright-Penn (remember her as the Princess Bride?) whose Christianity is really her own way of keeping the lid on her desparate situation, and Renee Zellweger as the Yuppie foster-mum who seems to have everything, but...
There's quite a delicate performance too from young Patrick Fugit as Paul, who senses Alison's true nature beneath her protective veneer.
To discuss the plot turns along Astrid's survival course would be to give too much away. Enough to say that the film ends with a guarded note of hope, and a suggestion that there might, just might, even be a possibility of some sort of personal redemption for mother as well as daughter.
Women are at the core of this movie, but it's by no means a 'women's movie'. Its issues of love and control are very real, and are treated quite intelligently and with a real dramatic focus.
My only demurrer is that Alison Lohman, in her punk-Goth mode, looks just too beautiful to have gone down that road. She looks more like a black-haired Buffy than someone really flirting with the dark side. But that could just be me - I always did prefer brunettes!
Was this filmed on 35mm or with one of the new high-definition video formats? I suspect the latter, as there seems no evidence of film-grain here. And colour values are almost as if a slightly-deadening filter has been placed over the image. It's bright, but without the normal colour palette we're used to.
But we adjust quickly to the slightly monotone palette, and the anamorphic transfer is free of disturbing artefacts of any kind.