Getting to Know You (1999)

Skillfully adapted from short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, this feature succeeds in its heartfelt, detailed depiction of crumbling families and how their effects can take a toll on the young. The wonderfully natural Heather Matarazzo creates a firmly identifiable teenage focus, and with the aid of a top-drawer cast, effortlessly etches out Oates' themes of loneliness and abandonment. Director Lisanne Skyler finds the right note in virtually every scene (except for a few obvious passages), and her restrained direction keeps the film on target, especially in the use of flashbacks, a device that often mars the narrative of similar pictures. The tone of the stories has an exactitude that's hard to fake; it sometimes feels as if the filmmakers actually lived in the bleak, barren towns the movie depicts. But the soulful rendering of the tales makes the film anything but bleak and barren. Getting to Know You enjoyed acclaim at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival but never picked up a distributor, leaving its director to explore grassroots methods of getting the film seen. The film was ultimately released independently, but only to a handful of theaters throughout the nation. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide