Release Date: November 12, 1999
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Natalie Portman, Eileen Rand, Corbin Allred, Shawn Hatosy, Ray Baker, John Diehl
Directed by: Wayne Wang
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Films Corp.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (sex-related material)
There may not be as many movies about mothers and daughters as there are about fathers and sons, but whatever the difference, Hollywood is making up for it fast. Consider that since last fall, there has been one film (hardly widely-released) about the father-son bond, the dark character study Affliction, and there have been at least three films about mothers and daughters: One True Thing, Stepmom, and now Wayne Wang's Anywhere But Here. But where those other two films had a strong plot impetus -- namely, a life-threatening disease which forces the mother-daughter (or, in the case of Stepmom, the mother-surrogate daughter) pair to bond -- this latest coming-of-age comedy has nothing to recommend it other than a pair of big-name stars and a hip-and-trendy setting.
It's quite a disappointing venture, considering that director Wayne Wang's critically-acclaimed Smoke is only four years removed the present; his Joy Luck Club was also well-received. The top names of Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon are also well-known and respected around Hollywood, Sarandon having dominated the silver screen among female actors over the past decade-and-a-half; and Portman coming into success quickly and steadily (although she may find her stock slighted after this outing). Even Alvin Sargent, who won the Academy Award for his adaptations of Julia and Orindary People, was employed in adapting the Mona Simpson source material.
But this top-rated bunch of individuals is wasted. Sargent's screenplay tells a coming-of-age story for the 14-year-old Ann August (Portman) as well as a personal journey of discovery narrative for Ann's mother Adele (Sarandon). Both stories have their merits, although Adele's portion serves as the background and foundation for the main character of Ann, and hence is less-developed and less interesting. But both stories compete with each other: we want to know the reason that Adele has picked up her kid and fled from their small hometown of Bay City, Wisconsin, in the middle of the afternoon; we also want to know more about how Ann is surviving in her newfound surroundings of Los Angeles. Neither receives adequate, continuous screen time.
"Anywhere but here" is the way Adele lives her life. She has dreams of starting over in Los Angeles after departing the dead-end town of Bay City, and she has dreams of raising Ann as a child actress in a life of immense wealth and success. But her new teaching job is hardly what she envisioned it to be, and soon the pair are not settled in the Beverly Hills Hotel but a series of cramped motel rooms and apartments on LA's west side. Ann finds a surreal sort of comfort in encouraging her mother to live the life she's imagined, as well as a more concrete support in hearing from her cousin Benny (Shawn Hatosy) and talking to her newfound friend Peter (Corbin Allred).
Both characters are hardly sympathetic, and they spend much of the movie entangled in each other's bad graces. It takes a strong performance to take a spiteful character and play him or her into the audience's acceptance, and it takes an even stronger director to take both leading characters and direct them as such. And, expectedly, neither Sarandon nor Portman nor Wang can accomplish the task set before them. Portman is arguably the best, but perhaps by default; director Wang gives her the camera over to her the most, and she even gets to say a few lines of voice-over narration.
The movie's first half doesn't suffer from these downfalls, and because we're getting used to the setting, plot, and characters, Anywhere But Here is largely tolerable. But its second half drags, sucked under by a pair of unfortunate occurrences: Adele's mother dies, and Benny -- not only Ann's cousin but her best friend -- dies in a car accident. The two return to Wisconsin, but Wang doesn't have anything interesting to say about how the characters cope with loss, and so it's not long before the movie returns to the City of Angels. The interminable second half culminates in a quasi-steamy love scene between Ann and Peter, which originally included nudity and sex but was rewritten to allow for Portman's attachment to the project. The new version of the scene makes even less sense than the old; implausible as it would've been, it would've provided more closure to that subplot if the screenplay had taken the appropriate liberties. But that sequence, as well as the movie's conclusion, is poorly directed.
Anywhere But Here is a bread-and-butter chick-flick, hardly indicative of the past excellence that director Wayne Wang has shown. And unlike the other films of its kind, its success will be lessened by an unlikely release date, stuffed between hot early-autumn products and blockbuster Thanksgiving releases; its likely course of run will find it as a popular video rental for ubiquitous pajama parties of teenage yore.
all contents © 1999 Craig Roush