White Oleander

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.

Both the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and DD stereo sound options are clear and distinct. This drama depends on clarity of dialogue, not on special effects, and this is delivered with the high level of audibility this drama deserves.

The audio commentary is likewise clean and precise, with legibility at the fore.

The 'Behind the Scenes' featurette, running for 13 minutes, presents a random moving-snapshot of actors and production crew during filming and between the scenes. It's a voyeuristic look at film-making which doesn't pretend to tell us anything about the process or about the film itself. Pretty vapid, really...

There are ten mini-interviews with cast and crew: actors Alison Lohman, Robin Wright-Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger, Patrick Fugit and Noah Wyle, and with director Peter Kominsky, producers John Wells and Hunt Lowry, with Janet Finch, author of the novel. These each range from a little over a minute to almost four minutes. They are for the most part remarkably bland and non-informative. The most interesting moment comes in Michelle Pfeiffer's interview when she says she was worried that the part of the relentlessy unsympathetic and tough mother was too relentlessly unsympathetic and tough - she would have liked to have softened it somehow. What sort of movie would that have made? Fortunately, she listened to her director.

Far better than these interviews is the optional commentary track, which presents informative background from director Peter Kosminsky, producer John Wells and the original author Janet Finch. Their commentary makes up for the paucity of info in the interview snippets and the lack of any information at all in the virtually worthless 'Behind the Scenes' feature.

The original theatrical trailer is presented in non-anamorphic widescreen and is in very decent condition.

Rent at first and purchase if, like me, you think this is a film of quite strong substance, resonances and depth. It's one I could return to several times, to glean just a bit more from each of the major characters.