Review: Junebug

Junebug is a movie about the faces people show to the outside, and the people they really are inside. It conveys this theme without ever being formulaic in its portrayal of its characters, or falling into that indie-film trap of being quirky just for the sake of quirkiness. This is a subtle, quiet kind of film, the kind you'll be thinking about for days after you see it.  I had to let it stew several days, just to get a handle on what I thought about it.

Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) is a Chicago art dealer who specializes in self-taught artists - specifically, self-taught artists who create edgy (some might say bizarre) "outsider" art. She meets the handsome George (Alessandro Nivola, who was also seen with Davidtz in Mansfield Park) at a benefit she's hosting for Jesse Jackson Jr. It's love at first sight for Madeleine and George - they get married a week later, we later learn - but what they have in common besides a strong desire to have lots of sex together remains a mystery.

When Madeleine has to take a business trip to North Carolina to woo a painter who may or may not be crazy, or retarded, or both, according to the locals, she convinces George this is an excellent opportunity for her to meet his family, since she hasn't met any of them yet, although they've been married for six months. Madeleine's fascination for the odd and bizarre is evident in her interactions with the artist, David Wark (played with just the right touch of freaky edginess by Frank Hoyt Taylor), whom she treats with reverence and respect - she seems to genuinely like his pictures of Civil War battlefields littered with dog heads on spikes and severed scrotums.

Wark could almost be a movie subject unto himself - a hermit-like old man holed up in his house, painting bizarre pictures about the Civil War - with white faces on all the slaves, because he can only paint faces he knows, and he doesn't know any black people - pictures that prominently feature enlarged male genitalia (General Lee's is so big, he points out to a duly impressed Madeleine, that he had to wrap it around to the back of the canvas).

George is less-than-enthused about taking his bride home to meet his family; we don't really know why, but we get some hints as we are introduced to George's family while they await his arrival. George's younger brother, Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie of The O.C. fame, really stretching his acting chops in a demanding and complex performance here), and his very pregnant wife, Ashley (Amy Adams, who won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance for her role in this film), live with Johnny and George's parents, Peg (Celia Weston) and Eugene (Scott Wilson).

Ashley is perpetually perky, chatty and hopeful, in spite of Johnny's sullen withdrawal from her and, seemingly, everything around him. Peg is one of those women so familiar to me from my own childhood in Oklahoma - the sonsy, over-bearing matriarch who always knows what's best for everyone, and doesn't hesitate to let them know when they fall short of where they should be, by her expectations.  Family patriarch Eugene, much like his younger son, has retreated into himself and his world of woodworking down in the basement, where he pokes around looking for a perpetually lost Phillips-head screwdriver. 

From the time they arrive at his parents' house, George shuts down and abandons Madeleine to figure out his family for herself, disappearing from the house for long stretches, taking naps on the couch - in fact, we see very little interaction between George and his family at all. While many women might be rather annoyed at being abandoned by a new spouse to sink or swim with his family, Madeleine, who grew up around the world as the child of British diplomat parents, seemingly takes it all in stride as just another culture to learn about and fit in with.

The only one who seems genuinely pleased to meet Madeleine is Ashley, who welcomes her exuberantly and latches onto her like an adoring child onto an older sister. She is in awe of Madeleine - her thinness, her beauty, her intelligence, her childhood growing up around the world. She wants to hear everything about Madeleine's childhood -  where she lived, her likes, her dislikes. She just as eagerly shares bits of herself with her sister-in-law, revealing she tried out for cheerleader (but didn't make it) and her favorite animal is the meerkat.

George's brother Johnny is an enigma - angry and reticent, he seems to spend most of his time at home glaring at the tabletop and smoking cigarettes. He seems to have no interest in his wife or the child she is carrying, a fact the ever-cheerful Ashley attributes to her weight gain during the pregnancy. She dutifully exercises and starves herself, hoping to please him with her efforts to regain her figure, to no avail, and masturbates longingly to a picture of her and Johnny taken in high school, when he still loved her. 

The only time Johnny seems to come alive and be truly happy is when he's on the job at Replacements, Inc., wrapping place settings in bubble wrap and chatting with his co-workers about watching the Carolina Panthers Super Bowl loss on videotape, over and over again -  hoping this time, they'll win. We see glimpses of the man inside, though - during Ashley's baby shower, Johnny is morosely channel-surfing in the basement, when he happens across a special about meerkats. He instantly springs to life, becomes animated and excited, trying to tape the show for Ashley, but he can't get the tape to work, it keeps popping out. Johnny gets more and more frustrated, ultimately lashing out in anger at Ashley when she tries to help him. "God loves you just the way you are," she tells him quietly. "But he loves you too much to let you stay this way."

The perpetually quiet and thoughtful Eugene sums up the theme of the movie perfectly, near the end of the film, when Madeleine says to him of Peg (in perhaps the cinematical understatement of the year), "She's a very strong personality, isn't she?" Eugene considers this, then responds, "That's just her way. She hides herself. She's not like that inside. Like most."

Everyone in this film hides themselves, in their own way. Johnny appears for all the world not to care about his wife or unborn child, but there is hope for him, for all that he seems unable to show it. Peg is a woman of steel, until devastating tragedy breaks her veneer, revealing the tender, broken heart buried beneath. Eugene and Peg seem to have that distance and persnickety-ness between them not uncommon to folks married a long time, until a tender moment near the end of the film, when he shows her without words that he understands her pain. Ashley puts on a cheerful face throughout, even when Johnny rebuffs her affections, until a moment of vulnerability creeps in when she tells Madeleine that she just knows Johnny still loves her, and that he'll love the baby...once it's here.

The acting is excellent all the way around. Although Adams certainly deserved her Sundance accolade, there are equally powerful and subtle performances from McKenzie, Davidtz, Taylor and Weston. My one complaint about Junebug is we don’t ever really learn much about George, but that seems to be a deliberate choice by screenwriter Angus MacLachlan and helmer Phil Morrison. Madeleine and George don’t really know each other any better by the end of the film than they do at the beginning, but they’re still connected, and, one senses, that connection might just be enough to hold them together long enough to see what’s on the inside.