The horror of watching a woman dismembered by a bus does not eliminate the pain and trauma of life, relationships and teenage angst that Lisa Anna Paquin is enduring and forcing family, peers and teachers to suffer with her. What it does do, after her initial lie, which is questionably honorable, is prompt her into action, misguided as it may be.Lisa convinces herself that she's fighting for justice and others, swayed by her vehemence, join the cause and convince themselves likewise. Self-deception and wayward morality of various types unfold across the two and a half hours of this <more> sensitively shot slice-of-life drama. Powerful and thought provoking though it is, it meanders to a wholly unsatisfactory resolution that left me feeling perturbed. My personal journey through the film took me through avenues of sadness, outrage, frustration and simmering anger.Not least amongst the reasons was the principal protagonist, Lisa, who is at heart immoral, thoroughly manipulative and deeply immoral. I don't like her. She's dishonest and blind to her own failings and dishonesty. I'm not given to violence but, had she been projected as a hologram in front of me, I'd have had a good go at throttling her.But it's not important to like a character in order to appreciate them. All of the characters are flawed and several would be best avoided at a social gathering, but they are flawed because they're real, or rather written and played with reality in mind. Lisa's actress mother, Joan, is, in her own way, as lost as her daughter, craving approval from Lisa but finding it only from her audience. Emily, the best friend of the corpse, is hurt, confused and angry, lashing out unreasonably at Joan's boyfriend Jean Reno for being anti-Semitic, although we later discover how inaccurate that was. People snap because they are hurt. It's understandable but it certainly doesn't stop one wanting to climb through the screen and yell at them for being so bitter, unreasonable and, in Lisa's case, odious. That such emotions are wrung from the viewer is testament to the precise performances of the actors and the firmly sensitive touch of writer/director Kenneth Lonergan. Even Alison Janney, as the casualty, makes her few minutes of screen time horribly memorable; last night I dreamt vividly of bloody and limbless victims struggling to comprehend their mortality. It's difficult to understand how a film shot in 2008 has only just reached our cinemas and that, last month when it opened, it did so in a total of one screen in one cinema for one week in the UK. I'd like to think my final word in Mark Kermode's video blog at 4 mins 10 secs had something to do the slightly increased exposure this month but it's probably just that, ultimately, quality is destined to triumph over popcorn fodder.At 150 minutes it's too long. Approximately one minute too long. The final scene gives hope that a level of honesty has finally been attained but then tragically, no, corruptly dissolves that hope by going too far for too long and undermining what might have been a redeeming step. It isn't! It's mawkish and as dishonest as this current stage of Lisa's life. <less> |