This film is short and sweet and leaves you with a good feeling. It is a bit cliched. I thought the family resembled sixteen candles that movie from the 80s which is also about life in the burbs and conflict, etc. I really like the film for it's performances and writing though. It's cinematography was also well done, noticeably on a low budget and in digital format.
Katie Holmes plays an interesting character. She is a punk with tattoos, piercings and a plethora of rings, along with pigtails dyed red. I think she pulled off the role quite well. Obviously she was playing against character her. She gained fame for Dawson's Creek as a small town all american girl. In this film she is the antithesis of that. She is the black sheep. And her mother is all too critical of her. The mother, Patricia Clarkson, is also very good as the mother who is dying of breast cancer. Her overly critical, pushed to the limit mother comes off as sympathetic in the end, perhaps the entire movies because the premise of the film stems from her having cancer and being close to death.
Being a black sheep myself and with the holidays around the corner I could identify with some of the themes in this film. The daughter who hasn't done anything right, who's life is a "disaster." Who has tattoos and dresses "quirky." All hit home. Also the total antipathy towards suburbia and it's conformity and utter brainlessness. When I was young I used to loathe it so much.
Roger Ebert in his review makes a good point about how the film plays on stereotypes of young black men. During the sequence where her boyfriend is at the telephone booth I got the impression that he was up to something illegal. And his presentation to the family is also sketchy.
It was a good film. I wasn't aware that the director/writer had done this movie and others. I love What's Eating Gilbert Grape and I hope he does more films.
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