By PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: * * * *)
This adaptation of Janet Fitch's bestselling novel was so likely to be awful that it's hard not to give it extra points for defying expectations. But Kosminsky, a British television director, has made an exceptionally dry-eyed and intelligent film - part coming-of-age drama,
part psychological thriller - out of material that could easily have turned to treacle.
With the exception of Pfeiffer, the stars have a succession of cameos while the camera lingers on Lohman, who turns in a finely nuanced performance as a girl struggling to grow up. She plays Astrid Magnussen, the artistic only child of artist mother Ingrid (Pfeiffer).
Ingrid does time for what the French call a crime of passion, but the possessiveness and manipulativeness that sparked her fall from grace have not abated. From behind the wire - and during Astrid's occasional visits - she continues to control her daughter with a breathtaking emotional ruthlessness and cynicism.
Meantime, Astrid bounces from foster home to foster home - first with a family Ingrid dismisses, not inaccurately, as Bible-thumping trailer trash and later with a fragile and dependent faded actress (Zellweger) stopping off twice at an institution where she shows she can look after herself.
Amid the incidental pleasures of the stars' work (Zellweger's clotted, awkward captive of fame is just right, and Wright Penn is in fine form as a chain-smoking, born-again bitch), Kosminsky never loses sight of his central idea: desperate to prosper, Astrid is surrounded by women each of whom conceives of herself as a victim.
Ingrid, of course, sees herself as anything but a victim and it takes us a long time to know any better.
In the meantime her icy, unblinking eyes convey perfectly her blend of arrogance and insecurity. A prison scene including Astrid and one of the foster mothers is only one killer moment in a resolutely unglamorous performance, as good as anything this long-underrated actress has done.
Fans of Girl, Interrupted and even Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World will find plenty to like here.
It's no kneeslapper, but given what the writer of Beaches might have done with the story of an unloved child, it's a remarkably accomplished piece of work.
Cast: Alison Lohman, Robin Wright Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger, Billy Connolly
Director: Peter Kosminsky
Running time: 110 mins
Rating: M, adult themes
Screening: Village, Hoyts Berkeley cinemas.
White Oleander
By PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: * * * *)
This adaptation of Janet Fitch's bestselling novel was so likely to be awful that it's hard not to give it extra points for defying expectations. But Kosminsky, a British television director, has made an exceptionally dry-eyed and intelligent film - part coming-of-age drama,
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