Release Date: December 10, 1999
Starring: Janet McTeer, Kimberly Brown, Gavin O'Connor, Jay O. Sanders
Directed by: Gavin O'Connor
Distributed by: Fine Line Features (New Line Cinema)
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (sexual innuendo, crude humor)
The thought of a runaway child paralyzes society. It's assumed that either the child's mind is corrupt (or more specifically, has been corrupted) or that the mother and father were negligent and unworthy of parenthood. But what of a runaway parent and child? Hollywood has given the masses its take on this topic with the good-intentioned but ill-fated Anywhere But Here, in which a mother-daughter pair flees their dead-end small-town life for the bright lights of Los Angeles and the prestige of Beverly Hills. But the trip there was made under more favorable circumstances than the odyssey in Gavin O'Connor's Tumbleweeds, and hence the cotton-candy melodrama was a turn-off. O'Connor's film is a much more realist, if still hastily prepared, view of the same search for personal discovery and rebirth.
Independent films that can reproduce the glamour of Hollywood blockbusters are far and few between, but Tumbleweeds still gives it its best shot. The movie's most annoying feature is the tendency for cinematographer Dan Stoloff to artificially inflate the tension in certain scenes by filming the goings-on with a jerky eye. The camera oscillates without abandon, distracting the audience from what might be powerhouse scenes.
Of course, much of this is unnecessary. The tension inherent to movie's volatile storyline is readily apparent, if not palpable. After a violent altercation with her latest boyfriend, Mary Jo Walker (Janet McTeer) grabs her kid daughter Ava (Kimberly Brown) and speeds off in the middle of the night. From their home in West Virginia, the two trek around the American Southeast before deciding to make a stop in Jefferson City, Missouri. It's there that Mary Jo plans to meet up with a former high school flame, now assumed to be a successful car dealer. He's anything but successful, however, and soon the mother and daughter have decided to leave their old life behind and make a new home for themselves in San Diego.
The two are soon settled in: Mary Jo has a clerical job at a vaguely purposeless office, and Ava is comfortably ensconced in a new school, the highlight of which is her theater class, which will exhibit a production of Romeo and Juliet at the end of the school year. Additionally, Mary Jo has a new boyfriend named Jack (played by director O'Connor), who, though seemingly benevolent, is despised by Ava for the attention he gets from her mother. It's not long before that relationship begins to fall out of orbit - just as Ava predicts - and soon Mary Jo must decide whether to face her faults or continue to run from them.
This is resolved in an unexpectedly feel-good ending, hardly typical of the likes of indie dramas. Along for the ride is one of Mary Jo's coworkers, Dan (Jay O. Sanders), who fills the cardboard-cutout role of a strong, rational man to pick up the pieces of Mary Jo's shattered life. His influence on the movie's plot is quite predictable, although given the movie's tendency to find itself in uncomfortable scenes of shouting matches and domestic discord, his is a welcome presence. Both Sanders and Kimberly Brown turn in sympathetic performances, making them the audience favorites. Ms. McTeer seems to have something great planned for the character of Mary Jo, but she never delivers, and in the end fails to elevate her character above the level of a ditzy blonde. Director O'Connor is suitable for the role of Jack, and he transitions the character from nice guy to temperamental meanie very stylishly. His performance is much better than his work behind the helm.
Tumbleweeds gains ground on Anywhere But Here for its more realistic portrayal of events, even though many of them go unexplained by way of instantaneous flash-forwarding. The movie chooses only to show us parts of the story it considers important, which, in a strange reversal of roles, emulates Hollywood's idiosyncrasies quite nicely. And let it not be said that independent films are without their charms, for although the roughly unfinished nature of the movie is detrimental towards its success, the honest, genuine style of direction wins back whatever points it loses. If you're going to watch a mother-daughter on-the-run movie this year, make it Tumbleweeds.
all contents © 1999 Craig Roush