August 28, 2002
		Buy the Book

White Oleander
(Warner Bros) Rated PG-13
Release Date -October 11, 2002

White Oleander is headed to Toronto, so it was a good film to get out of the way.  I headed to the screening, expecting a decent weepie.  I don’t mind a good weepie.  So in I headed.

Halfway through the movie, I moved seats.  Not because I was antsy.  But because I needed to know more about the director whose work I was watching.  Because I had to know who some of the supporting players, whose faces weren’t familiar, were.  Because I had to know what daring cinematographer was shooting this thing.

Peter Kosminsky is well established in England.  He’s won awards and acclaim.  But this is his first American theatrical release.  And he has leapt, for me, right into the top echelon of drama directors in Hollywood.  He’s not Soderbergh or Scorsese or Coppola.  He’s not quite that inventive or singular.  But with this film, he’s gone right to the top of the next tier, past the Luis Mandokis, Penny Marshalls and even the Rob Reiners of the world… directors who make good, sturdy dramas with skill. 

Kosminsky raises the form.  His transitions are masterful, if not eye-popping.  He moves the camera in ways that I have seen over the years on Brit TV, but he freshens them up and finds way to make them stirring.  It was not a surprise when I saw that the DP on this film was Elliot Davis, coming off of I Am Sam, also starring Michelle Pfeiffer. The way Davis handles actresses’ faces felt like a form of brutality when he shot Madonna for The Next Best Thing and is remarkably beautiful here, when photographing Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger, Robin Wright Penn and even Cole Hauser.

But Kosminsky does the most remarkable thing of all in White Oleander.  He takes his time.  He lets the movie breathe.  He lets the emotions breathe.  And for his effort, he gets career-topping work from Pfeiffer, Zellweger, Hauser and Noah Wylie.  He also gets a solid performance from a young actress who could easily have left him hanging.

As for Pfeiffer, I would now put her right on top of the list of candidates to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.   Pfeiffer is always better when she plays power instead of weakness.  She broke through with Scarface, where she played both ways.  But in Tequila Sunrise, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Batman Returns, Dangerous Minds and this, Pfeiffer is more than one of the most beautiful faces ever in Hollywood.  She is raw and real and smart and sexier than in any of her “softer” roles.  And at this time, I would be surprised if it doesn’t win her an Oscar.  (Of course, there may well be a future performance that changes that surprise… but she is a lock for a nomination.)

I’m not going to write too much more.  But as a point of reference, White Oleander is a coming-of-age movie like you have rarely seen… sort of Anywhere But Here by way of At Close Range.  The intimacy Kominsky attains with Zellweger, Hauser and the young lead, Alison Lohman is fresh and unexpected.  The high level coming from Pfeiffer and Robin Wright Penn is expected, but their roles are not.  A really fine film…