Somebody likes Joyce Carol Oates … and I think its Deborah Kampmeier …
A festival movie for sure. It’s clean and academic in a way that disconnects it from the subject matter. At no point do we believe that any of these people are poor much less treating each other in an uncivilized manner. Piper Laurie is stuck playing a Carson McCullers version of the mother in Carrie, the ever capable Dakota Fanning spends the whole movie unwittingly auditioning for The Runaways and Jill Scott makes a bizarre appearance as Big Mama Thornton inexplicably dressed exactly like she did on this television show in the 50s:
To its credit it succeeds in feeling like a Southern gothic novel without becoming a b movie but we all know what the big deal is about this and its got nothing to do with the gothic tradition. This is the movie where Dakota Fanning gets raped. There’s no two ways around it; you can watch it and try to forget but you know what’s coming. It doesn’t help that she’s hyper sexualized throughout this movie - I don’t know what Deborah Kampmeier was trying to prove or if she thought it was brave to be a female filmmaker owning the ‘male gaze’ by turning it on a child but yuck.
The worst thing is that there’s no real point to any of it. Towards the end of the movie Dakota calls her friend a nigger to which he says “no you are” (and I’m paraphrasing) because a nigger is anyone who is hurt by other people. Kampmeier! Come on! It is crazy business to me that that made it into a final script much less filmed, much less executive produced by Robin Wright Penn. Anyhow, after that confrontation her friend invites her to stand in the spot where Jill Scott was earlier in the movie and give the worst rendition of Hounddog in history.
This movie is shouting at the viewer about childhood, racism, sexuality, adulthood, parenting, religion, oppression, etc but ultimately doesn’t say anything.
Skip it and read Bastard out of Carolina, Ballad of the Sad Cafe and First Love.
