I'm not sure this review is worth reading. I've only watched the first ten minutes or so of the film but its trajectory is already so clearly outlined that I'm not going to bother with the rest of it. Well, maybe I will but I don't expect any surprises.
Here's a rough approximation of the opening scene.
Mary Kay Letourneau hangs up the phone and enters the bathroom where her husband is shaving before the mirror. "My father has prostate cancer," she says. The husband pauses for a second then continues shaving. "They only give him three months to live," she says. The husband continues shaving and replies, "What do you want me to do about it?" I'm still laughing.
Okay. Here's the story, including allusions to what I remember of the case itself. She's a teacher, starved for love. Her husband seems not to care for her, she's had a miscarriage, he life is falling apart.
BUT -- she's a teacher and one of her students, a thirteen-year-old boy, shows an interest in her. In real life, Vili Fuala'au was a burly Samoan kid with a buzz cut. In the movie he's played by a sensitive-looking Latino with large and gentle eyes. And he's a genius too. You ought to see his copies of Georgia O'Keefe's painting. Magnificent.
He makes some curious remark about the way she dresses and she takes him aside to reprimand him. The next thing you know, they're in love and she becomes pregnant somewhere along the line. In prison -- this is all in the first few minutes of the movie -- the other members of her therapy group call her a child molester and other names. Her attorney claims that she's bipolar and should be on medication. Mary Kay knows better. She shakes her head, tears in her eyes -- no, she's not bipolar and not a child molester. She's in love and so is Vili. In life, her lover sold the rights to his story to a tabloid newspaper for a sum I don't remember.
I do recall from the case that she was released from jail on probation or something, with the proviso that she never see Vili again, but amor vincit omnia, including the provisions of probation, and the two lovers are caught one night humping in a car parked under a street light, the windows all fogged up by an excess of cathexis.
My suggestion is to simply watch the opening, then sit back and connect all the dots mentally, which saves the time, expense, and difficulty of watching this movie. The case itself, historically, should have been handled differently. Mary Kay Letourneau should have been told to find an older lover and Vili should have been spanked for cheating both inside and outside of class. I know Samoans and I know thirteen-year-old boys and -- trust me on this, if nothing else -- he wasn't corrupted by doing something that every thirteen-year-old boy on the planet would love to do with a young, attractive, lonely teacher like Mary Kay Letourneau.
It's a curious thing. I spent two years as an anthropologist studying Samoan personality in a small village on Tutuila and the sexual fantasies of boys, and of grown men for that matter, didn't involve younger girls, as they so often seem to do in Western society, but older women instead. From his cultural point of view, Vili got a lucky break. But sometimes I wonder if we ought not to just stay out of other people's fantasies, as long as there are no victims, and let conflicts be resolved between the individuals. There might be much less pain than if we turned something like this into a cause celebre.
The movie, quite naturally, casts Mary Kay Letourneau in the role of suffering victim. Most of the movies in this genre show us a misunderstood and threatened woman. In this case, I kind of agree with that view. The cure may have been considerably worse than the disease.
Here's a rough approximation of the opening scene.
Mary Kay Letourneau hangs up the phone and enters the bathroom where her husband is shaving before the mirror. "My father has prostate cancer," she says. The husband pauses for a second then continues shaving. "They only give him three months to live," she says. The husband continues shaving and replies, "What do you want me to do about it?" I'm still laughing.
Okay. Here's the story, including allusions to what I remember of the case itself. She's a teacher, starved for love. Her husband seems not to care for her, she's had a miscarriage, he life is falling apart.
BUT -- she's a teacher and one of her students, a thirteen-year-old boy, shows an interest in her. In real life, Vili Fuala'au was a burly Samoan kid with a buzz cut. In the movie he's played by a sensitive-looking Latino with large and gentle eyes. And he's a genius too. You ought to see his copies of Georgia O'Keefe's painting. Magnificent.
He makes some curious remark about the way she dresses and she takes him aside to reprimand him. The next thing you know, they're in love and she becomes pregnant somewhere along the line. In prison -- this is all in the first few minutes of the movie -- the other members of her therapy group call her a child molester and other names. Her attorney claims that she's bipolar and should be on medication. Mary Kay knows better. She shakes her head, tears in her eyes -- no, she's not bipolar and not a child molester. She's in love and so is Vili. In life, her lover sold the rights to his story to a tabloid newspaper for a sum I don't remember.
I do recall from the case that she was released from jail on probation or something, with the proviso that she never see Vili again, but amor vincit omnia, including the provisions of probation, and the two lovers are caught one night humping in a car parked under a street light, the windows all fogged up by an excess of cathexis.
My suggestion is to simply watch the opening, then sit back and connect all the dots mentally, which saves the time, expense, and difficulty of watching this movie. The case itself, historically, should have been handled differently. Mary Kay Letourneau should have been told to find an older lover and Vili should have been spanked for cheating both inside and outside of class. I know Samoans and I know thirteen-year-old boys and -- trust me on this, if nothing else -- he wasn't corrupted by doing something that every thirteen-year-old boy on the planet would love to do with a young, attractive, lonely teacher like Mary Kay Letourneau.
It's a curious thing. I spent two years as an anthropologist studying Samoan personality in a small village on Tutuila and the sexual fantasies of boys, and of grown men for that matter, didn't involve younger girls, as they so often seem to do in Western society, but older women instead. From his cultural point of view, Vili got a lucky break. But sometimes I wonder if we ought not to just stay out of other people's fantasies, as long as there are no victims, and let conflicts be resolved between the individuals. There might be much less pain than if we turned something like this into a cause celebre.
The movie, quite naturally, casts Mary Kay Letourneau in the role of suffering victim. Most of the movies in this genre show us a misunderstood and threatened woman. In this case, I kind of agree with that view. The cure may have been considerably worse than the disease.