TUMBLEWEEDS (Fine Line) Starring: Janet McTeer, Kimberly J. Brown, Jay O. Sanders, Gavin O'Connor, Laurel Holloman, Lois Smith. Screenplay: Gavin O'Connor and Angela Shelton. Producer: Gregory O'Connor. Director: Gavin O'Connor. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 100 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Sometimes there is no better demonstration of a concept poorly executed than the same concept well executed. Take TUMBLEWEEDS, for instance. It's the story of a Mary Jo Walker (Janet McTeer), a flighty and frequently irresponsible woman, and her smart-aleck adolescent daughter Ava (Kimberly J. Brown), who cringes at her mother's suspect decision-making. After the collapse of Mary Jo's latest bad marriage, mother and daughter jump in their car and flee their home for greener pastures, eventually landing in Southern California (the San Diego suburb of Starlight Beach, to be precise). Ava tries to make the best of the situation and find some stability, but Mary Jo simply jumps headlong into another questionable relationship, this time with gruff trucker Jack (co-writer/director Gavin O'Connor).
Sound familiar? It should -- the plot is virtually identical to that of the current Susan Sarandon/Natalie Portman film ANYWHERE BUT HERE. Of course there are elements unique to each central relationship, and there are idiosyncrasies in the personalities of the lead characters. Essentially, however, each film is the story of a mother/daughter friendship where the maturity hierarchy has been inverted, set against the backdrop of the California sun. TUMBLEWEEDS just happens to be a rich character study that feels genuinely human, instead of like a Hollywood construct.
It doesn't start out looking that way. The early scenes find Mary Jo and Ava flinging their clothes out the car window in an act of liberating littering, and tracking down an old high school classmate of Mary Jo's who turns out to be less dreamy than she had hoped. The wacky set pieces smack of contrivance, turning TUMBLEWEEDS into a low-budget variation on mainstream tales of female bonding. Even the hand-held camera work starts to seem more like a contrivance than a tool to evoke a sense of urgency The very grittiness O'Connor is aiming for becomes just another brand of glossiness.
Then, right about the time the Walkers arrive in Starlight Beach, something just clicks. Newcomer Kimberly J. Brown's performance as Ava, which had seemed too rough around the edges, develops into something intriguing and unique, not at all the typical mature-beyond-her-years, foul-mouthed-beyond-prime-time movie kid. Janet McTeer's brassy Mary Jo similarly blossoms into a character easy to understand but considerably harder to pin down. The relationship between the two shows all the twists, turns and knots of a complex mother/daughter pairing, but there's never a sense of manufactured conflict. These people behave like real people; their battles don't sound scripted, and their interdependent affection is thoroughly convincing.
Brown and McTeer are both pretty darned good, but the reason TUMBLEWEEDS starts to work so well is that O'Connor doesn't force the story to rest entirely on their shoulders. ANYWHERE BUT HERE was a mother/daughter story in which the mother and daughter sometimes seemed to be the only two humans in the city; TUMBLEWEEDS develops the characters through their interactions with friends and co-workers. Ava's flirtations with a goofy classmate show an edgy side to her emerging sexuality; Mary Jo's scenes with Jack show her tendency to use men as a prop in her life, as well as her problems dealing rationally with disagreements (similarly shown in her abrupt departure from a mundane job). TUMBLEWEEDS gives its two central characters a context in which to operate, something sadly lacking in ANYWHERE BUT HERE. Verisimilitude isn't necessary for every kind of film, but it's fairly useful in a character study. In TUMBLEWEEDS, Gavin O'Connor effectively portrays a mother and daughter trying to find their way in the world, because he effectively portrays their world.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 tumblin' tumbleweeds: 7.
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