White Oleander
(2002, USA)
Writers: Janet Fitch, Mary Agnes Dornoch
Director: Peter Cosminskin
Starring: Alison Lohmann, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robin White, Renee Zellweger
tale:
The White Oleander is based on the best-selling novel debut of American author Janet Fitzzi. Astrid, a 15-year-old girl, lives with ingrid, the artist's mother, and one day, a man named Barry enters their lives, and Ingrid falls madly in love with him, eventually leading to heartbreak and ruined life. Ingrid is imprisoned for poisoning Barry with her favorite oleander, and Astrid is torn apart in a welfare home and foster home. In this nearly ten years of wandering, Astrid has experienced forbidden love, religion, near-death experiences, indulgence, and also experienced her own love. The only constant was that she kept meeting and communicating with her mother. Ingrid is in prison and encourages Astrid to be strong, and Astrid teaches her mother what love is.
Film critics:
Youth is the explicit theme of "White Oleander", and the relationship between the daughter and the mother is constantly pulling and rationalizing, making the youth of the girl become extremely realistic. Astrid admired her mother's artistic position and wisdom, but her mother was a control freak, both for her daughter and her boyfriend. The whole film runs through the perspective of a young girl, and the handheld camera is shaky and uneasy, accurately presenting the uncertainty of the girl's tossing and turning between the three families and the welfare home, but it is appropriate to stop in the place where it is easy to stir up emotions, and draws a line with the lyrical tricks of the melodrama. The film has some changes from the original novel, such as changing the identity of the mother poet in the original novel to a multimedia artist, but retaining many of the plots of the novel, continuing the atmosphere of some hope in the cruel reality of the novel.
Astrid's first family was crowded, impoverished, and numerous, and her adoptive mother, Starr, loved tights and had as strong makeup as her character, but was a staunch Christian who believed in God, at odds with Astrid's mother, Ingrid, a staunch atheist who believed that only she could save herself. She believes in independence, but she is planted in the hands of love, which is just ironic. She taught her daughter that "if you can't see, you can't be an artist" – is her own irony, because she herself is lost in love, she can't see the true face of men and love, and if she sees, she will not put herself and her daughter in perpetual torture. Astrid's love affair began, and because of the absence of her father since childhood, she had a good feeling for Star's boyfriend Layton, which eventually led to Star's jealousy and shot and hurt Astrid. The love of youth, the attachment to adult men, that gentle temptation, was obliterated by a gunshot.
The girl's second adoptive mother is the wealthy failed actress Claire, who is depressed and miserable because her husband has been working in the field for many years, but she is very happy with Astrid and loves her very much. For the first time, Astrid felt the love of her mother. But the good times did not last long, and the actress eventually committed suicide because she was abandoned by her husband. This is Astrid's eternal pain in her heart, and it directly leads to her sudden transformation in the third foster family, becoming a seemingly depraved girl, but the film does not go to the extreme, and the Russian vulgar mother of the third family is not a villainous stepmother in the fairy tale.
The film has two lines running through it: Astrid's visit to her mother in prison, and her youthful love affair with the juvenile cartoonist Paul in a welfare home. Overteach visit, Ingrid became increasingly overprotective of Astrid, who grew up in the escape from her mother again and again. The mother tried to make herself, and she wanted to be herself. Youth love does not have much novelty, from the initial indifference to temptation, attachment, separation, until the final happy ending, and the direction of Korean dramas is similar, like compensation for the hurt of Astrid, which is too romantic.
Astrid's role, played by Alison Lowman, who starred for the first time, the 22-year-old Lohman lived up to expectations, entangled the love and hatred between the girl and her mother and the loss she felt after the mother finally let go, and acted appropriately; the mother played by Pfeiffer was charming, as the object of her daughter's worship, but she was deeply confused by love, and the gaze on her daughter after the end of the crime was also far from the sensationalism of many mediocre movies, and there was a stubbornness, forbearance, no remorse, perhaps a disguise, but finally let her daughter understand the way she loved. Renee Zellweger, who is now plagued by plastic surgery rumors, is also very suitable for the role of an actress with a broken heart, and the desire, loss, and attachment can be seen through the eyes. The role of Star played by Robin White also allows Astrid to see how attached women are to men. Interestingly, in two families with adult men, both adult men and women have fierce arguments and even end up abandoning each other. In such a film supported by female characters, the actors Hauser, Fudge, and the little boy who loves to watch stars in Star's family are outstanding and are not buried by female brilliance.
British director Peter Cosminskin, who is directing in the United States for the first time, because of his outsider status, perfectly presents the customs and customs of Los Angeles from a special perspective.
Author: Zhu Cheng