Review of Junebug (2005) by Countess N — 17 Oct 2011

Junebug is a quirky little film that boasts some great performances and a director who knows how to impose his personality an vision without getting in the way of said great performances. Amy Adams is marvelous as always, again with a character that is usually marginalized or turned into a stereotyped. Her carefree country-bumpkin plays beautifully against Embeth Davidtz's sophisticated, slightly uptight Maddy.

While the performances are strong all around, the real strength of this film is the script, which presents the two women as real people, with real lives as opposed to the usual romantic relationship storyline women get in films. Here the relationships between the three couples are all sharply contrasted, the newly weds, high school sweethearts and those approaching several decades together. Junebug deals with the miscommunication and the unknown between two people who are supposed to be in tune, but for different reasons have trouble communicating. It also speaks to the need to try and that it is never too late to start over and fix what went wrong.