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Blue Car
by Sasha StoneWhat first time writer/director Karen Moncrieff lacks in originality with her debut, Blue Car, she makes up for with an insightful take on her characters. This is a director who will be good with actors, perhaps because that's how she got her start in the business, acting in the soap opera Santa Barbara, among others.
But Moncrieff, as it turns out, like her main character Meg (Agnes Bruckner), is far from just another pretty face.
Blue Car, not to put too fine a point on it, examines the relationship between a vulnerable teen and a horny old teacher. As a girl's life begins to crumble, she comes to lean on and trust the teacher (David Strathairn, who is destined to play perverts, poor guy) too much.
Her mother works, then goes to school and spends the rest of her time laying the guilt down on her two daughters. Meg is expected to come straight home from school and look after her younger sister. But there¹s something wrong with the younger sister Lily (Regan Arnold) she cuts herself up and goes on hunger strikes. And Meg doesn't so much look after her as ignore her while they're in the same room. Eventually Lily ends up in a mental hospital.
Meg is invited by her teacher to enter the "Discovery" young poet's contest the winner will get to compete in the national contest and win a hefty scholarship. Meg wins. And though every sign in her life seems to be telling her she can't go to the contest, she begs, borrows and steals - even hocks her mother's diamond engagement ring - to get herself to Florida to compete. Going to Florida represents more to Meg than the poetry contest: it's the chance to be near the one person who regards her highly, the one man who has yet to abandon her, the only human being on the planet who seems to understand her her teacher.
What happens next should be easy to predict especially if you've known a teacher or two who was as free with the compliments as with the fondling. Yet to Meg, it seems the only direction open to her (she's been kicked out of her house by her mother).
And in Florida she learns the hard way what will be common knowledge for most of us older gals: men especially failed writers aren't that complicated. Most of them will feel desire for someone like Meg what they do with that desire is what separates the good guys from the bad guys, or the strong from the weak. As an adult Meg will look back and say: what the hell was I thinking? It is only in that moment of time that the man looks like a prince.
The film settles a little easily on clichés the unsympathetic, narcissistic mother we've seen a hundred times, the perverted teacher, the sullen teen. But Moncrieff creates depth for most of the characters, especially Meg, who is allowed her freedom to be a brat, a thief and a seductress. It isn't that she's supposed to be all good or that the teacher is all bad it's that there are certain violations that can't be forgiven. It may not have even been a matter of whether her married English teacher had made a pass at he,r but the way he did it pushing himself on her without asking her permission he's like a vampire who must suck the promise from the promising
Well put together words make great songs and great poetry. We have the power to suppress them or give them away like candy. Moncrieff has chosen her words more carefully than she has drawn her characters, who come off too arch-typical at times. But this is a clean story told by someone who clearly discovered the value of creative expression before it was too late.
Karen MoncrieffBlue Car tells us that it's not true that "words can never hurt you." Iit's words that hurt the most and in this film it's the words that have the most power to perhaps alleviate the characters' agony but for a few kindly chosen words, there wouldn't be such self-hatred, such pain.
©2003 Sasha Stone
CineScene
