Review: Anywhere But Here
Anywhere But Here can boast of having the marquee stars, the bigger budget and the earlier release date but it comes nowhere near the excellence of the similarly themed Tumbleweeds, due out this Thanksgiving.
Ann (Natalie Portman) and her mother Adele (Susan Sarandon) have taken to the road. Or, more precisely, Adele has taken to the road and dragged her daughter along with her. Adele is headed for California, that state of celluloid dreams where she hopes Ann will become a child actor. Ann doesn't want to act - the thought has never even crossed her mind - and she'd rather be anywhere than with her flirtatious and flamboyant mother. "The only thing that keeps me going is that I'll leave her soon," Ann confides.
More than anything, Ann just wants to go back home to be with the best stepdad she could ever hope to have, her best friend Mary (Thora Birch) and especially her cousin Benny (Shawn Hatosy), of whom she is incurably fond. Mona Simpson's novel, upon which this film is based, dictated Benny's brief presence. A shame really as Hatosy has such warmth and appeal to spare, and he and Portman relax into each other affectionately. Alvin Sargent, who adapted Simpson's novel, would have been wise to expand the role. Undoubtedly, Benny is an idealized character written in rose-coloured ink so it's an added tribute to Hatosy that he manages to humanize an essentially one-dimensional character. He impresses in the scarcest of scenes.
The film's primary focus is the mother-daughter relationship - how rigorously sullen and realistic Ann wants to be normal and behave her age but she keeps having to play adult to a mother who can't seem to get her responsibilities in order. Adele dreams big and wants big dreams for Ann as well. Yet as smart as Adele can be, she has no sense when it comes to men: either she leaves the ones who love her or is used and disposed of by the ones she pines after.
Though Ann sees the reality of her mother's love life with eyes wide open, she plunges almost dangerously into her own. She invites the boy who fancies her over, orders him to strip and looks him over with surprising predatoriness. Yet when he stands before her and they kiss, her tight embrace of him reveals that it's not sex that she wants. Like her mother, she wants someone to believe in, someone to love and be loved by.
Despite the gravity and inherent potential of its theme, the film feels slight and easily disposed of. It affects but only by-the-numbers. Ann and Adele's arguments are too pat - their happier moments, therefore, don't emit any poignancy. Neither Sargent nor director Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) seem to want to risk alienating the audience by letting either Ann or Adele have any faults. If the mother-daughter relationship is meant to be one of conflict - and it certainly is, with one wanting to hold on while the other is determined to let go - then the characters have to display flaws that aren't sitcom-cute and easily smoothed over.
The film is made tolerable by its two leading ladies though Sarandon, at times, loses control of her all-over-the-place character. Luckily, Portman's restrained and unsentimental playing balances the equation. Birch, featured to greater prominence in American Beauty, delivers the disaffection and knowing her one major scene requires.
Anywhere But Here
Directed by: Wayne Wang
Written by: Alvin Sargent; based on the book by Mona Simpson
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Natalie Portman, Hart Bochner, Shawn Hatosy, Eileen Ryan, John Diehl, Ray Baker, Bonnie Bedelia, Thora Birch
