Blue Car (2003)

Chip on your shoulder, Ms. Moncrieff?

This was a "good" (not great) little indie movie from 2002 that had some major talent involved, and shows flashes of brilliance, but ultimately is a bit underdeveloped and lazy in the character development. Definitely worth a watch, but could have been better.

Agnes Bruckner is good and believable as the protagonist. Unfortunately, her character (IMO, due to the script) varies between being compelling and maddening. It is almost hard to believe that someone who is so inexpressive as she is in the early part of the movie would write poetry at all. It is mostly Bruckner's likability and the look behind her eyes that makes her character sympathetic (check out when she steals from a drug store...we still are rooting for her), as her character really shows little of what supposedly is roiling around inside of her. In contrast, her little sister's character stands out much more (the little girl who played her was fabulous), and it is a pity that she departs from the story when she does, as her presence gave it depth. The mother's character is mostly cliched and one note, and the conflict between her and Bruckner's character, no matter how much *some* of it may be real, unfortunately pushes the story into weaker territory. Check out the M/D relationship in "thirteen" to see this portrayed more believably.

This could have been a good movie and made it's point without the introduction of the sexual element into it, but once that is introduced, the movie takes a turn for the worse. By the end, Bruckner is supposed be the sympathetic figure here, even though she instigated the change (careful for what you wish for!), and David Strathairn's character, while having brought about and nurtured Bruckner for months or years is suddenly turned into a vapid predator whose entire character is a lie, which mostly conflicts with the character he has played the whole movie. I'm not saying scenarios like what was portrayed don't happen, but the people they were supposed to be wouldn't have handled it that way, and Bruckner's character wasn't fleshed out enough to make her anything but pedestrian. The ambiguity may have been "real", but real can also be compelling, and this wasn't.

The director obviously had a statement she was trying to make, but it came off seeming more like a personal one than something enlightening for her audience. It's too bad, because Bruckner, Strathairn, and the wonderful girl who played Bruckner's sister deserved better. It is also good to see a movie of this nature made, about real characters, understated, and not Hollywood-ed up. Oh, and did I mention how great it is to hear Lori Carson's music in the soundtrack? It just seemed to me that that the writer/director was trying harder to make a statement about how she feels than a compelling movie.
July 13, 2008

How DARE They?

American Beauty - NOT even close, NO comparison. American Beauty, with K. Spacey and A. Benning is so much more entertaining, unpredictable, and, did I say ENTERTAINING.

I agree the acting in Blue Car is flawless, the one star is for the false expenctancy the false advertising gave me, so as to dissappoint me. If marketers hadn't done that, who knows what perspective I would have come from, but they did, and so I came out disappointed, felt like my time was wasted watching a movie about a poor kid who gets betrayed over and over, first by her own MOTHER, father, then baby sister, then friend, and then.....the only thing (in her perspective) she has left in her life betrays her, her beloved and entrusted teacher - an utter dissapointment and disenchantment. But - did this break her? Ah no my friends, just the opposite! This, actually is the daybreak of her life, for this betrayal shows anyone watching, what Meg had all along, what no one can take away from her, what stays inact no matter what.

Despite having NO ONE, she manages to keep herself. How? It could be the poetry. It could have been the false hope before all the betrayals, but, one thing is for certain, the kid's gonna need lotsa shrink work when she grows up. Her resilience shines through during her poetry reading - and that resilience manifest - the daybreak - THAT *IS* a happy ending, people. This movie does have a happy ending. Too bad even people who gave it 4 or 5 stars don't see it. Too bad. August 25, 2007

Fantastic, till the final fifteen minutes.

Blue Car (Karen Moncrieff, 2002)

You know, it took me all of five minutes to figure out where Blue Car was going. It's a testament to Karen Moncrieff's film that, for the most part, that didn't diminish my enjoyment of it in the slightest.

Meg Denning (The Woods beauty Agnes Bruckner) is a troubled high school student, pulling farther and farther away from her mother after her parents' divorce. She turns to her English teacher, Mr. Auster (David Strathairn), who encourages her to enter a nationwide poetry competition for high school students. When she wins the first round, she becomes obsessed with finding a way to get to the nationals in Florida without help from her mother (from whom she's keeping her victory) or her teacher (she doesn't want to impose).

Moncrieff's script starts dropping hints that this won't be Dead Poets' Society pretty quickly once the mise-en-scene is set, and the main suspense in the film metamorphoses from "will it happen?" to "when's it going to happen?". Once we get to the Big Reveal(tm), the film does slip a bit, as the script goes down the most predictable possible pathway, and we end up with just another object lesson in Why It's Bad To Do The Things your Parents Warned You About. Still, it doesn't come off completely cheesy, and that's something. The pleasure of the ride was worth the suffering. And, you know, it's Agnes Bruckner. Which should be enough for most red-blooded males. *** ½ May 27, 2007

Traveling Down A Long, Lonesome Highway

Blue Car is no chuckle fest, this much is certain, but in its chilling realism, confident pacing, and expert acting is a sadness that has the exquisite beauty of truth, human truth. This movie does not have characters, it has people. Some you love, some you feel sorry for, some you despise; all are as actual as the last clerk who gave you change.

Meg, Agnes Bruckner, would seem to have more than enough dysfunction in her life to satisfy the minimum daily angst requirement of a high school student. Her divorced mother has both hands gripped firmly on the ledge and oscillates between neglect and rude intrusiveness. Her father is virtually out of the picture. Worse still, she is charged with the care of her mentally imbalanced younger sister, something between a chore and a trial.

Smart and sensitive, Meg is disconnected, with little in life to rely on. When her English teacher takes an interest in her poetry, and her, it introduces an unprecedented ray of hope into her life. Like Agnes Bruckner, who gives a flawless performance that is bravely open and giving, David Strathairn's performance as her teacher, Mr. Auster, is practically a master's class in acting.

Auster is no mere lech or predator; he is a weakling and emotional cripple who lives in a world where bad faith is revealed in layers. Too cowardly to seduce Meg, he must create an environment where she drifts towards him naturally. Because she is already so damaged, this process is painful to witness.

People never stop finding ways to betray and disappoint Meg, and the more it happens, the more tightly she clutches her book of poems, her trip to Florida, and the tender support of Mr. Auster, the one person who believes in her. But that is the nature of the blues. You don't get the blues when you lose something you don't care about. You get the blues when the only thing you have left, the one thing you knew you could trust and rely on, turns out to be a pathetic lie. How you respond determines whether you get the blues, or they get you.

Meg is a very brave young woman who knows more than she should have to know at such a tender age. Writer and director Karen Moncrieff is to be saluted for this gem. October 26, 2006

Angst-ridden but redeemed by good acting

"Blue Car" does a very impressive job of developing the growing closeness between Meg Denning (Agnes Bruckner) and her high school English teacher, Mr. Auster (David Strathairn). It is not easy to find a balance between sympathy and condemnation in dramatizing such a taboo and finally destructive relationship. The insightful script and, even more, the gifts of these two actors bring that off.

The dismally joyless sex scene, fully prepared for by the writers and actors, was amazingly well done: Mr. Auster attempts to watch out for (or tries to convince himself that he is watching out for) Meg's needs, but his lust finally does him in. His desperate attempt to get her to declare that she "wants him" is simultaneously creepy and sad. Still, he tries to act the caring teacher even as he abandons her. Not surprisingly, she fails to give him the benefit of the doubt. The audience hardly knows who to side with here. The result is ambiguous and very real; that scene keeps replaying in my memory.

I thought the film was less successful in avoiding the trap of adolescent angst. Portraying the angst sometimes shaded into imitating it. On the overdramatic side, "Blue Car" loaded the character of Meg down with just too many tragedies, which I won't list here so as not to spoil the film (or further depress myself). In response to these, her character sometimes toppled over into self-indulgence, as expressed in her brooding poetry and her occasional histrionics. The symbol of the blue car, the car that her estranged father left in when he departed the family scene, is one example of a motif that could have been handled with greater restraint.

I probably would have thought this was a really profound movie when I was seventeen -- in fact, I'm sure that I would have. So it's perhaps unfair of me now to expose it to the view from the other side of middle age. But in the end, despite its many virtues, I found it rather limited in its self-awareness. May 10, 2006

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