White Oleander Review
by Bob Bloom (bobbloom AT iquest DOT net)October 12th, 2002
WHITE OLEANDER (2002) 3 stars out of 4. Starring Alison Lohman, Robin Wright Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger, Billy Connolly, Patrick Fugit, Cole Hauser, Noah Wyle and Svetlana Efremova. Music by Thomas Newman. Screenplay by Mary Agnes Donoghue. Based on the novel by Janet Fitch. Directed by Peter Kosminsky. Rated PG-13. Running time: Approx.
Love can be manipulated like a scalpel. In the right hands it can be a tool for healing, in the wrong hands. ...
Astrid lives this lesson as she shuttles through a series of foster homes while her mother, Ingrid, serves out her prison term for murdering the boyfriend who abandoned her.
It would be a fallacy to dismiss White Oleander as a “chick flick,” because this drama has so much to offer.
White Oleander records 15-year-old Astrid’s journey through various homes as well as chronicling her changing relationship with her strong-willed mother.
An outstanding and touching performance by newcomer Alison Lohman propels White Oleander. The young actress morphs her character and look in adapting to the homes to which she is sent.
Her foster mothers include Starr (Robin Wright Penn), a born-again Christian with a drinking problem; Claire (Renee Zellwegger), a needy actress with marital troubles; and Rena (Svetlana Efremova), a cynical
Russian immigrant who teaches her charges about surviving in a harsh world.
But towering over them all is Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer), Astrid's beautiful artist mother. She is serving a 30-year-to-life sentence for poisoning her lover with oleander, a poisonous flower.
An uncompromising, free spirit, Ingrid continually plays mind games with Astrid, constantly reminding her that her survival depends upon following her mother’s credo — love and listen to mother, no one else.
Ingrid persists in a feeding her daughter a Nietzsche-like philosophy of survival and strength.
“Love humiliates you,” she tells Astrid.
When she sees Astrid wearing a cross to appease Starr, and learns that Astrid has attended church, she warns the girl that “evil is tricky.” — a prophecy that comes to pass when Starr tries to kill Astrid during a jealous outburst.
Ingrid thrives in her incarceration. “Prison agrees with me. Here, it’s kill or be killed,” she tells her shaken daughter.
Pfeiffer’s beauty hides a monster, a dangerous, proud, cold, calculating, self-centered, selfish artist who — despite her protestations about missing Astrid — never wholly accepts her part in the emotional havoc she initiated for the teen-ager.
Pfeiffer always has had a cold beauty, a hint of danger that she best utilized in The Fabulous Baker Boys. Here, it comes to the fore. Her Ingrid displays no remorse.
Penn’s Starr is a weak, conflicted woman who uses religion as her crutch, while Zellwegger’s Claire is an emotionally stunted woman-child acting the role of mother, more than living it.
But this is Lohman’s film. Her performance moves between heartbreak and rebellion as she continually tries to accommodate to fit in and gain the unconditional love she seeks. But whether a clean-scrubbed church girl or a dark-haired Goth cynic, the pain never leaves her eyes.
White Oleander is her movie and she carries it with the style and ease of a veteran performer.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or at [email protected]. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at www.jconline.com by clicking on golafayette. Bloom's reviews also appear on the Web at the Rottentomatoes Web site, www.rottentomatoes.com and at the Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
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