Review of Junebug (2005) by Markb. — 25 Sep 2005

Whatever happened to the concept of Southern hospitality? Judging from this rancorous drama from writer Angus Maclachlan and director Phil morrison, both North Carolina expatriates, it's either in very short supply or was never there to begin with.

Sophisticated, urbane art dealer Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) travels to her new husband's hometown for the first time both to meet his family and to close a deal with a local folk artist (although not necessarily in that order of priority).

Said painter (Frank Hoyt Taylor) is your first tip-off that not everything is moonlight and magnolias in Dixie: he's a racist, bottom-feeding evolutionary throwback with the I.Q. of a mildewed throw rug, and his "art" (which Madeleine fawns over) is a series of blood-and-phallus horrors allegedly depicting the Civil war but far more accurately opening the door way too wide on his dangerously demented psychological state.

..and I wouldn't decorate my worst enemy's outhouse with them much less a museum. (The character's name, by the way, is David Wark...is that a not-so-subtle in-joke reference to the director of the Ku Klux Klan-loving silent classic Birth of a Nation?) Things don't get much better for Madeleine; although she's a kind, well-intentioned soul, she's no match for husband George's catty, manipulative mother Peg, addlebrained, screwdriver-fixated dad Eugene, or resentful, embittered slug of a brother Johnny; these family encounters, which poor Madeleine constantly gets the short end of, are filmed by Morrison in a pretentious, coffee-table style that seems to care more about the characters' furniture than the characters themselves; living rooms and hime workshops are dwelt upon in loving (and boring) detail, and at one point the camera fades to black for so long that a couple of my fellow patrons started to get up to inform the usher that something was wrong with the projector! In their treatment of most of George's family, there's no shot too cheap or blow too low for Mclachlan and Harrison; they can't show us Peg being moved to tears at a church service without having her act in a highly hypocritical, nonChristian manner a few scenes later, and they're equally unable to give us a shot of Johnny asleep on the couch without having him drool on the cushion.

The one exception to all this Southern-fried venom--and a glorious one it is, and the only reason this film rates a 6--is Amy Adams (Catch Me If You Can) as Johnny's very pregnant wife, Ashley: a woman who's naive but deeply wise in her own way, and who, unlike the rest of the household, possesses no prejudices, preconceived notions or hidden agendas.

..she's just thrilled beyond belief to meet Madeleine because now she has a new best friend, whose nails she can paint and everything! Adams in this role is nothing short of completely breathtaking: she's hilarious, pathetic, endearing and heartbreaking in equal and simultaneous quantities, and triumphantly counters the long-held (and often true, but not in this case) dramatic postulate that bad characters are more inherently fascinating than good ones.

Watch Adams handle a bedroom scene with a high school photo of Ashley and Johnny during happier times--a sequence that by its nature could've gone wrong in a dozen different ways--and you'll see miracles happen.

Adams, and to a lesser but still significant degree Davidtz, whose utter generosity and good sportsmanship in allowing Adams to dominate all their scenes adds genuine class to her already formidable trademark loveliness and delicacy, are the ONLY things Junebug has going for it; I can only assume that the amount of love that critics nationwide unanimously (and understandably) have bestowed upon Adams' character and performance has misled them into thinking that this is some kind of balanced, fairminded portrait of the South.

New York Times critic Stephen Holden has been quoted prominently in the ads praising Junebug as a perceptive distillation of red state/blue state hostility; on the contrary, it's so harsh on most of the folks below the Mason-Dixon line that it temporarily turns the currently popular Ann Coulter/ Bernard Goldberg/ Michael Medved/ Fox News-promulgated myth of a patronizing, condescending liberal elitist media into a 107-minute reality.