Since I saw The Dark Knight last weekend, my Netflix movie of the week was a holdover from last week. I'm still in an indie rut of sorts, and the current entry is Junebug, which was an Oscar movie from 2005, in the sense that Amy Adams was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. That's mainly why it made my queue; I had no particular want or need to see this movie past that, so I had no expectations going in. Though I see from the film's Spout page, there's quite a bit of mixed reaction. That's about how I feel too.
The plot, to the extent there is one: Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) marries George (Alessandro Nivola) in a week, after a lust-at-first-sight romance (seriously). She also owns a gallery for "outsider art" in Chicago - how clever. The gallery's newest discovery is an eccentric painter from North Carolina who likes to depict scenes from the Civil War with more than the usual nudity and injections of modern life in his historical interpretations. So, Madeleine and husband George drive down to North Carolina because, of course, his family lives not too far away from this painter, and the painter gets the personal touch from Madeleine. The family's reception of Madeleine is also a mixed bag: mother Peg (Celia Weston) is mistrustful and cold; father Eugene is quiet but a bit more welcoming; brother Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie) is indifferent, preferring to be angry at his brother for even bothering to return; and sister-in-law Ashley (Amy Adams) takes to Madeleine like peas and carrots, wanting to know everything about her and be more worldly like her. What follows is really less of a plot and more of a quasi-organized character study. I'll get to that in a minute.
This film doesn't really have much to it. It's as charming as it is because the presence of Amy Adams and her wonderful performance infuses the film with comedy that would otherwise not be present. Embeth Davidtz (Mark's tightly-wound girlfriend in Bridget Jones' Diary) also gives a restrained and nuanced performance, making Madeleine a sympathetic character when she could have otherwise been a monster. I read some of the Netflix reviews of this film before I queued it up, and most of the sour reviews come from the notion that this film is somehow an indictment of small-town life, that the Madeleine character is a sophisticate meant to measure and exaggerate all of the backwater ignorance that a small-towner might have. I don't see that at all. If anything, it's more of a city mouse surviving in a country mouse's world, and the portrayals of everyone but the painter character are greatly sympathetic, at least in my vision. The Johnny character (apparently that guy is from the OC; I never watched it) is meant to be the voice of the critic who would view the film this way, and neither Madeleine nor George ever show an attitude of superiority, and I never got the feeling that these people were exemplars of country bumpkins.
What is troubling about this film, though, is that its story cohesion is really its biggest flaw. We know nothing about George, nothing at all, and he spends half the film in the background, emoting somewhere between apathy and affection for his roots. We have no idea why Johnny would react the way he does to George - maybe there's a backstory, but the viewer is never given it. The best developed character, in fact, is Ashley. Her story comes out in some painfully subtle and emotional ways, and it's with her that the viewer empathizes, helped along by her frustrated husband's emotionally-abusive tendencies. Add to that Amy Adams' truly wonderful performance, showing all of these emotional extremes from subtle to obvious, and the character is a well-rounded look at people who marry young and, perhaps, foolishly and what might result from that. We also never really learn what Madeleine takes away from her time with this family, other than that she never really knew her husband prior to marrying him in a whirlwind, one-week romance. Gee, imagine that.
If it weren't for Ashley, this film would be much worse. There's nothing particularly fantastic about the craft of this movie. There are many - I mean, more than a few - still shots of the house and surrounds in which George grew up, but they fail to resonate because George, as a character, is never given any real purpose in this story except to be one half of the contrivance upon which city mouse drives to the country (the other half being the painter's work, which, I'm sorry, would never sell in a Midwest museum. I mean, would it? Anyone want to comment?). The song rolling over opening and closing credits was kind of cute, but other than that, there was nothing spectacular to speak of.
This film is really more about its characters, the classic fish out of water story coupled with a story of returning to one's roots and how people change. Yet, the film never really flushes out all of its characters, so it kind of meanders to its inevitable conclusion, failing to give one true story of character, with the notable and afore mentioned exception of Ashley.
Because Amy Adams was so delightful and entertaining (she actually reminded me of a friend of mine in her unerring positivity), and because Ashley's story turned out to be compelling even if the rest of the movie really was not, I feel this film deserves a 7, a classic shaky but entertaining. I was engaged in her story if nothing else. As for the test, it's not good enough to pass. In fact, this film would be downright depressing, in a needless way, if it weren't for the addition of that character. Junebug may be a semi-cute movie, but it would not be a cute name for any baby.