NEWS

1 February 2003

Michelle did it!  For her impressive work as Ingrid Magnussen in White Oleander, she has been nominated by the Screen Actors' Guild (In other words, her acting peers).  Her fellow nominees in the Best Supporting Actress Category are Julianne Moore (The Hours), Catherine Zeta Jones (Chicago), Queen Latifa (Chicago) and Kathy Bates (About Schmidt).  The awards are presented on Sunday, 9 March in Los Angeles.  The ceremony will be broadcast on TNT.   

 

25 January 2003

White Oleander is set for its North American video and DVD release on 11 March 2003. Special features on the DVD are:
15 minutes of Additional Scenes.
Bravo Special: The Making of White Oleander.
HBO First Look: The Journey of White Oleander.
Commentary by Book Author Janet Fitch and Filmmakers.

Award Watch: Michelle Pfeiffer has been nominated as Best Supporting Actress for the Glaubbers, Brazil's film awards. White Oleander's costume designer Susie DeSanto has also been nominated by the Costumers' Guild in the category of Contemporary Dress.

 5 January 2003

Award Watch:  Michelle Pfeiffer named Best Supporting Actress by San Diego Film Critics, and runner-up in the same category by Washington DC Critics.  Renee Zellweger shares that runner-up spot, and has received a Best Supporting Actress nomination in the Golden Satellite Awards.  

6 January: Michelle named Best Supporting Actress in the 37th Annual Vote of the Kansas City Film Critics Circle.

My White Oleander Review (minimal spoilers):

It's always difficult writing a review for a film based on a popular book.  There is major temptation to continually draw comparisions between the two projects.  White Oleander, the film, is undeniably faithful to Janet Fitch's novel in terms of plot and even visual style, and yet in an odd way a casual viewer, someone who has not read the book, would probably feel more satisfied with it than a fan of the book.
 
This is not to say that the film is bad.  Not at all.  White Oleander is one of the few films with Michelle in a supporting role I would be content to watch the whole way through, without skipping to Michelle's scenes. 
 
White Oleander still offers a lot for the viewer.  Obviously the cast and performances are a major sales point, but White Oleander is also refreshingly rough around the edges.  It isn't a glossy, sentimental 'woman's film' at all.  It's one of Michelle's more uncommercial ventures.  Despite some stunning visuals that take the viewer, like teenage protagonist Astrid Magnussen (Alison Lohman), to a variety of contrasting Los Angeles locations, as she navigates the foster care system, the film tends towards harshness and can be depressing at times.  An ominous silence hangs over many scenes, with Thomas Newman's subdued score only surfacing during certain moments integral to Astrid's development.   
 
White Oleander, the novel, despite its lyrical style, never wallowed in emotion and sentimentality, and it's a quality the film version (directed by Peter Kosminsky) shares, primarily as a result of its editing.  Scenes tend to be short, broken up with quick cuts, and sometimes complicated even further with integrated flashbacks that suddenly burst onto the screen from apparently nowhere.  The beginning of the film, explaining why Astrid's mother, artist Ingrid (Michelle) Magnussen goes to prison, is especially rocky.  It could be argued that the numerous jumps, spanning large amounts of time, reflect Astrid's confusion and lack of control as events unfold around her, but the film, at least initially, is so disjointed it leaves the audience confused, and damages the actors' work. It is difficult to connect with the characters.  Billy Connolly, as Ingrid's unfaithful lover, Barry, has approximately 30 seconds of screen time.  And the audience never really learns what Ingrid did to him.
 
Fifteen minutes in, the film's pace slows slightly, and while the audience is generally restricted to mere glimpses into characters' lives while weeks and months pass, what is seen is understandable.  Readers of the book are able to fill in details, while casual viewers should still get the point of the included scenes. 
 
Once Astrid enters the foster care system, the focal point really becomes the performances, and they should really be critiqued from here on in.  There has been some debate about the order of names in the credits, and having seen the film, according to screen time I would list the actresses on the poster (Alison Lohman, Robin Wright Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger) in the following order: Lohman, Pfeiffer, Zellweger and Wright Penn.
 
All of the actresses turn in stellar work, but it is Alison Lohman and Michelle who ultimately have the most impact given that they have the most screen time, and share the most emotionally-tense scenes.  Many of the supporting players turn in excellent work.  The film presents the foster children as sharing a kind of kinship.  Marc Donato, as the information-obsessed son of Starr (Wright Penn) is especially touching as he struggles to choose between loyalty to his damaged mother, and his friendship with Astrid.  Almost Famous's Patrick Fugit is also likable as cartoonist Paul Trout, a teenager made worldly-wise by years in the foster care system, and who emerges as a kindred spirit to Astrid. 
 
Of the rest of the male characters, ER's likable Noah Wyle successfully tackles a small self-absorbed role, while Cole Hauser makes for a far more attractive and audience-friendly Ray, Starr's boyfriend.  His casting helps to explain why Astrid is willing to risk everything, although the representation of their relationship seems to have been unfairly softened by an apparent fear in American cinema of even showing a kiss between a man and under-age girl.
 
Robin Wright Penn, as Starr, makes the most of her limited screen time (a large portion of her role seems to have been edited out of the finished film), providing the film's few laughs as a spandex-wearing reformed stripper and born-again Christian.  It's a potentially stereotypical trailer-trash role, and for much of the time Wright Penn plays it for everything its worth.  However, as Starr's suspicions about Astrid and Ray grow, Wright Penn's character becomes darker and darker.  Her best scene is a jealousy-fuelled confrontation of Astrid that, by its end, has revealed all of Starr's insecurities and hypocrisy.
 
Another semi-comical foster mother role is that of Rena, a hard-talking and drinking Russian immigrant who has embraced American capitalism in its entirity.  With sayings like 'sentimental is stupid', Svetlana Efremova's character is Astrid's most practical, unemotional foster mother, perfect for the hardened young woman Astrid has become by the time she arrives in Rena's ramshackle home.
 
In recent years Renee Zellweger seems to have cornered the market in likable, soft-spoken, cinema-softies.  In White Oleander, she takes that persona to the extreme as emotionally-fragile actress, Claire.  Zellweger is excellent at capturing the clingy nature of such a woman, and her desperation to please at whatever the cost.  Zellweger is so convincing in her weakness though that by the end of the film, regardless of how crucial her role is, she tends to be forgotten.  Especially in the face of Astrid and Ingrid's emotionally-charged daughter-mother relationship.
 
Which brings us to Astrid and Ingrid.  Allison Lohman quite possibly is Astrid.  I doubt another young actress could as successfully have captured Astrid's quiet observance of events around her, and her passage from wide-eyed, impressionable 14-year-old to a hardened, cynical goth.  Considering that Astrid is in very scene of the film, it's essential that the audience feels for her, and they do.  When she bursts into tears on being reunited with her mother in prison for the first time, you really grasp the strength of their bond. 
 
As convincing as Lohman is in Astrid's quieter moments, she is just as good when it comes time for an emotional outburst- an example being her attempt to revive Claire.  Allison Lohman is an extremely talented young actress.  Having seen her television work, I'm looking forward to what she can do with the medium of film in the future.
 
So finally we come to Michelle as Ingrid Magnussen.  Ingrid is a fantastic role for Michelle, extremely different from her previous work, especially of the past decade.  It goes without saying that Michelle looks gloriously (but suitably) beautiful throughout White Oleander, but her performance here provides more to appreciate the more times you see it.  Her work is undeniably award-worthy, as Ingrid allows Michelle to fully unleash the dark side that cinema-goers have only occasionally glimpsed over the past two decades of her career.
 
It's easy from the start of the film to see Ingrid as a selfish bitch, but the 'bad girl' label is too simple for such a complex character and performance.  Ingrid's self-obsession is certainly present from the start.  This is a woman who makes her daughter explain in detail why her art is excellent.  Michelle doesn't even flinch away from Ingrid's arrogance as she makes claims that Astrid is perfect because she herself is perfect. 
 
At the same time, with Ingrid there's what other reviewers have called her 'cult of personality'.  Ingrid's self-confidence has invested her with a strength that's noticeable, and even admired, by other characters. Astrid early on in the film, appears less as a daughter, and more as a disciple groomed by Ingrid to carry on her work.  For imprisoned Ingrid then to see Astrid mimicking others instead of her, is infuriating.  An example is one of my favourite scenes, where Ingrid's mood suddenly changes after spotting a crucifix around Astrid's neck.   
 
I'll say at this point, and I may be alone here, but in Michelle's films I often find one cringe moment, where I feel embarrassed for the character or what Michelle has to do onscreen.  With White Oleander there are no such moments.  Michelle even convinces as Ingrid in pretentious-guru-mode, who from behind bars mouths off to Astrid about the nature of evil, what defines art, and the human condition.
 
'Balancing act' is another term that has popped up in reviews to describe Michelle's White Oleander work.  For all the times Ingrid is fixated on herself, for all the times she does things like leaving Astrid in the car while she's off having sex, she does love her daughter. Even if it may take a while for Astrid, and the audience, to realise it.  Despite her 30 minutes or so of screen time, Michelle is able to maintain that balance between Ingrid the monster, and Ingrid the flawed mother. 
 
The former is perhaps best exemplified by Claire's prison visit, where Ingrid demolishes her with a few carefully-selected comments. The scene is as gripping onscreen as it is in the book, and Michelle, with frozen smile and unblinking eyes, has never come across so vicious.  Even better is the moment after the visit, where Ingrid shares with Astrid what she has just done, and the 'fun' of destroying Claire.
 
The other extreme is the Ingrid of the final revelation-packed confrontation between mother and daughter (watch Ingrid's facial expression as approaches the newly-transformed Astrid).  Here too Michelle is absolutely spot-on as Ingrid, who even at her most vulnerable, is too proud to voice her remorse.  Her actions instead speak for her in a scene, that although altered from the book, suits the overall tone of the film and demonstrates a quality of Ingrid's that the Academy is normally falling over itself to reward.
 
All in all, White Oleander is a tough drama that remains extremely close to its source material.  The novel's scope however is so large that people familiar with the text may may come to view the film only as a highlights package.  But regardless of whether you've read the book or not, the film's performances are worth your attention.  You particularly can't afford to miss one of Michelle Pfeiffer's signature roles.  
7.5 out of 10.

14 October 2002

Here's a selection of comments from major reviewers and publications regarding Michelle Pfeiffer's performance as Ingrid Magnussen:

Under Articles are several new interviews and reports. Coming soon are some images from the Los Angeles premiere and a revamped Links section.

News Archives

 

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