Junebug

Junebug is kind of like some alternate-universe version of Meet the Parents. Imagine if that movie had been directed by Ingmar Bergman, only not in Swedish. And set in a suburb in North Carolina. Oh, and there's a demented racist artist guy who paints murals of black guys with white faces who murder white people with their massive, exploding cocks.

But, you know...Otherwise, it's totally like Meet the Parents.



Okay, yeah, I don't really get the outsider art guy either. It's a whole sub-plot of the film, and I understand the function of that sub-plot within the larger film, but not why the sub-plot is so bizarre and out of nowhere. I think maybe it's supposed to be funny. The box describes Junebug as a comedy, and I didn't really find it funny.

That's not to say it wasn't good. As a drama about a passive-aggressive family with a lot of repressed anger, it's pretty astute and well-conceived. It's just, you know, not very funny. Unless you think painful, emotionally strained family get-togethers are hilarious.

The film takes a while to get going. Director Phil Morrison opens with a sequence of North Carolina locals (presumably) doing a weird kind of yodeling, then we cut to a long shot of some trees and see the title Junebug. Then we see the film's main couple, art dealer Madeleine (Embeth Davidz) and her future husband George (Alessandro Nivola) meet at a benefit and quickly fall in love. Madeleine finds out about a weirdo in North Carolina who does these amazing paintings, and she wants to go meet him, which will give her a perfect chance to finally go out and meet George's family.

The few days spent with George's strange family will fill the rest of the movie, but before we get there, we have to go visit the crackpot artist (Frank Hoyt Taylor), who babbles about the Civil War and the Confederate Army and how God tells him what to paint and how he doesn't know any black peopel, so he has to paint all of them with the white faces of his friends and relatives.

There's even a whole scene with snarky "cameos" from musician Will Oldham, Upright Citizens Brigade member Matt Besser and Mr. Show veteran Jerry Minor, which I guess is in the film to give it "indie cred." All this stuff is total crap - meaningless, unfunny, silly, pretentious. And it all comes before you even meet most of the film's major characters. What the hell?

Thankfully, about 20 minutes in, Angus MacLachlan's otherwise adroit script gets to the point, and Madeleine and George arrive at the Johnston home. We meet his distant, nearly-silent father Eugene (legendary character actor Scott Wilson), who spends nearly the entire film desperately searching the house for a lost Phillips-Head screwdriver. Then there's George's Mom, Peg (Celia Watson), whom Madeleine continually refers to as Pam. Finally, there's George's brooding, hostile younger brother Johnny ("The O.C." star Ben McKenzie, proving he's better than the material he's routinely provided for television).

Johnny will provide the enigma at the center of the film. He's extremely angry with George for unspoken reasons, he's aloof and mean-tempered to everyone around him. He completely and shamelessly ignores his doting, relentlessly cheerful and very pregnant wife Ashley (Amy Adams). And he's awkwardly coming on to Madeleine during the only scene in the film when he acknowledges her existence.

We sense that Johnny's odd change of heart, which Ashley refers to as a phase dating from two years back, has fundamentally altered the dynamic in this household. Ashley clings to her makeshift family tighter than ever in the face of his indifference. Eugene has learned to tune out completely, to emotionally divorce himself from the tumult around him. And Peg has turned domineering and controlling in an attempt to force everyone to love one another again. Madeleine and George drop into the middle of this rocky situation, and try to make sense of it the best they can.

This material works well because it's so subtle and observant to the small details of life. Rather than force the Johnston's into some manufactured plot designed to jerk everyone around and build to a weepy climax, MacLachlan and Morrison allow them to simply exist as who they are, and to work out their issues in the way a normal family might when faced with a series of crises. In one scene, during Ashley's baby shower, she opens an antique baby spoon from Madeleine. The other guests get enthusiastic, and Ashley bubbles with excitement in her traditional style, but Peg gets in a small dig under her breath - "it won't go in the dishwasher." That kind of catty aside gives you such insight into Peg's buried hostility, her deep-seated need for supremacy and control over the small zone of her home...it's these kinds of moments that hold Junebug together.

MacLachlan and Morrison do kind of betray this during the film's Third Act, which does kind of attempt to insert a false "climax" to give the film closure. Ashley goes into labor at the same time that Madeleine's wacky artist needs her attention, and the need to decide between the two situations forces her to confront the real meaning of family. Though this entire weekend, she has feigned great interest in the Johnstons and casually asked permission to join their clan, is she really ready to make them her family, to sacrifice her own life for their comfort and well-being?

Morrison doesn't play the scenes too over-the-top, but it's a bit forced and it rings a little false (particularly George, who has been absent most of the film, suddenly turning self-righteous when Madeleine wants to pursue her career amidst his sister-in-law's hospital stay). And, as I said before, I just didn't care about the kooky artist or that entire sub-plot. It doesn't work nearly as well as the family material.

Amy Adams won the audience award at Sundance for her performance here, and it's easy to see why those audiences fell in love with the character. Ashley is by far the most engaging, funny and lively personality in Junebug, and her chatty goodness resonates particularly strong because it's otherwise such a quiet, subtle film. Actually, her character is probably the closest Junebug gets to condescending, About Schmidt, redneck-joke territory. Early on, she's so wide-eyed and full of questions for the sophisticated, worldly Madeleine ("Did y'all have a lot of boyfriends? Have y'all been married before? Is y'all too old to have kids?", the whole film is in danger of slipping into caricature.

Don't get me wrong, Adams is great, and handles the transitions of the considerably depressing third act well. I'm just saying that she's more noted because hers is the BIG character, and the smaller work of some of the rest of the cast warrants mention as well.

Scott Wilson, best known as Dick Hickock from Richard Brooks' classic In Cold Blood, does exceptional work as Eugene, a man of few words but a deep and abiding love of his wife and children. He has a brief scene with Madeleine, in which he kind of half-apologizes for his wife's aggression without actually apologizing, that's particularly simple and impressive.

What's elevates Junebug above most family dramas of its type is its evasiveness, a kind of half-seen quality. Morrison interestingly refuses us any real interaction with the characters individually, on their own. We only see them around one another, when they have their game faces on. For the duration of the film, and in particular its initial stages, people are trying to feel one another out, and of course to impress one another. (Particularly Madeleine, who spends the entire film both getting to know and trying to butter up the Johnstons, and also desperately trying to convince a maniacal artist to sign with her gallery).

So you've got these twin dynamics going on at once - we the audience are watching these strangers work out their long-standing personal conflicts, and these characters are working out these conflicts in front of strangers. Davidtz is great at walking this line during the film - we're never quite sure if she's just irrepressibly cheerful and charming, or if she's just a really good phony. (Her cell phone chats with her preppy secretary back in Chicago hint at the latter). Right at the film's conclsuion, once they have left the Johnston home, George breathes a sigh of relief to be away from all the chaos, and it's the first and only time in the whole film either character indicates a lack of enthusiasm for Meeting the Parents. Whether they have secretly felt this way the entire time, like so many other questions about the family's inner lives, is thankfully left to the viewer's imagination.