White Oleander is the story of a teenage girl shuffled between foster homes while she attempts to understand her relationship with her mother and her own troubled past. In a dazzling performance, Alison Lohman plays Astrid, the young girl who starts her pilgrimage through a series of foster homes when her mother is incarcerated for murdering a two-timing lover.
Michelle Pfeiffer plays the troubled mother, a bohemian artist who is clearly not your typical suburban soccer mom. The heart of the story is mother and daughter trying to reconcile their troubled relationship as Astrid moves from one foster home to another with the occasional stop at the juvenile detention facility. Pfeiffer's performance is outstanding and is really just one of four brilliant performances-the other two being Robin Wright Penn and Renee Zellweger as two of the foster moms Astrid encounters along the way.
Robin Wright Penn plays a born-again former alcoholic stripper turned foster mom. Her performance is great, but the character is the first in a series of characters that seems a bit too contrived and a bit too plastic. Zellweger's character seems a little less contrived, but her personal circumstances and the ultimate outcome of her term as foster mom seem very artificial. The third foster mom is a Russian immigrant in love with capitalism and is the most contrived caricature in the bunch.
There is a powerful story here supported by outstanding performances. Unfortunately, the power of the story is substantially diluted in the telling of the story. The story is dark with great potential for depth, but the visuals are so airy and light that there is a fundamental disjuncture between content and tone. This was my primary criticism of Spielberg's The Color Purple. Alice Walker's novel is dark and the characters in the novel are complex. Spielberg "prettified" the novel a bit too much and part of the power of the story was lost in the process. The same thing happens here.
White Oleander is worth seeing if only for the outstanding performances. This is an adequate movie that could have been a really great movie in the hands of a director like Martin Scorsese or Sidney Lumet. Unfortunately, director Peter Kosminsky tries to have it all-- stunningly beautiful blondes in high-key lighting mixed with dark, somber themes of betrayal and loss. Roger Ebert says it best-"the film takes the materials of human tragedy and dresses them in lovely costumes, Southern California locations and star power." Powerful, interesting stories are such a rarity at the cineplexes these days that it is almost painful to see a film with such potential reduced to mere mediocrity.
Michelle Pfeiffer plays the troubled mother, a bohemian artist who is clearly not your typical suburban soccer mom. The heart of the story is mother and daughter trying to reconcile their troubled relationship as Astrid moves from one foster home to another with the occasional stop at the juvenile detention facility. Pfeiffer's performance is outstanding and is really just one of four brilliant performances-the other two being Robin Wright Penn and Renee Zellweger as two of the foster moms Astrid encounters along the way.
Robin Wright Penn plays a born-again former alcoholic stripper turned foster mom. Her performance is great, but the character is the first in a series of characters that seems a bit too contrived and a bit too plastic. Zellweger's character seems a little less contrived, but her personal circumstances and the ultimate outcome of her term as foster mom seem very artificial. The third foster mom is a Russian immigrant in love with capitalism and is the most contrived caricature in the bunch.
There is a powerful story here supported by outstanding performances. Unfortunately, the power of the story is substantially diluted in the telling of the story. The story is dark with great potential for depth, but the visuals are so airy and light that there is a fundamental disjuncture between content and tone. This was my primary criticism of Spielberg's The Color Purple. Alice Walker's novel is dark and the characters in the novel are complex. Spielberg "prettified" the novel a bit too much and part of the power of the story was lost in the process. The same thing happens here.
White Oleander is worth seeing if only for the outstanding performances. This is an adequate movie that could have been a really great movie in the hands of a director like Martin Scorsese or Sidney Lumet. Unfortunately, director Peter Kosminsky tries to have it all-- stunningly beautiful blondes in high-key lighting mixed with dark, somber themes of betrayal and loss. Roger Ebert says it best-"the film takes the materials of human tragedy and dresses them in lovely costumes, Southern California locations and star power." Powerful, interesting stories are such a rarity at the cineplexes these days that it is almost painful to see a film with such potential reduced to mere mediocrity.