Junebug (2005) - At The Movies Review

Junebug

Dragging new in-laws back to the family home has provided grist for a couple of American films recently but perhaps none done with the subtlety of Phil Morrison's Junebug.

Art gallery owner Madeleine, (EMBETH DAVIDTZ), and her husband George, (ALESSANDRO NIVOLO), take the opportunity to make a first visit to his parents when she goes to North Carolina to sign up an unknown rural artist.

Madeleine takes the same attitude to the family as she does to the artist. They are weird, but she wants to understand them and win them over. This is a shoo-in with sister-in-law Ashley, (AMY ADAMS), who regards Madeleine like a visiting movie star. The interface between the family and Madeleine has its surprises both ways.

The cultural nuances of director Phil Morrison and writer Angus MacLachlan's Junebug. The divide between the sophisticated north and the Christian rural south, could be lost on an audience outside the United States, but the film is not a polarising event.

It's a depiction of detail, of subtleties, of family relationships that resonate, although not all of the questions you might want to ask are answered in this film.

However, its understatedness, its astuteness allow full play in the character of Ashley, (AMY ADAMS) walks a beautiful line of naivete and graciousness, she is absolutely the heart of this film.

All performances are perfectly judged, it's just one of those films that enrich and make you go out of the cinema quietly satisfied.

MARGARET: David.

DAVID: Well, Amy Adams certainly is very, very good. She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this part last year. But I find it a very odd film. I mean, for example, we see at the beginning how the two, couples, main couple, meet in the gallery which she owns in Chicago.

MARGARET: Meet in lust, really, don't they?

DAVID: Meet in lust, that's right. But then some weeks or months seem to have gone by before they make this trip south. I mean, has there been...

MARGARET: No, it's a year I think it's really a long time.

DAVID: So how come she hasn't met his family before then?

MARGARET: This is the thing, I mean, do you need all those questions answered?

DAVID: Yes, because it bothered me, because I'm asking that question from the very start. How come the family...

MARGARET: And you sit there thinking, for the whole film...

DAVID: Absolutely.

MARGARET: Oh, David, that's ridiculous.

DAVID: No, it's not. Something like that, if it rings false, it can really it can really...

MARGARET: But there are too many of them in this film.

DAVID: I know.

MARGARET: All of a sudden you realise that all the questions that you may want to ask are actually unimportant, and what is important is the non judgmental attitude the film makers have towards these people.

DAVID: I think that's interesting, but that's not you see, it's not enough for me. It's not enough for me.

MARGARET: I don't want every "t" crossed and every "i" dotted.

DAVID: I just don't believe it, that's the trouble. It just doesn't ring true for me. And yet the film has tremendous qualities, especially in the acting.

MARGARET: But it's almost, like, implicit, the answers in the film, you know, why he hasn't been back for all this time.