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Tumbleweeds takes the mother-daughter genre neither here nor there

Blowin' in the Wind

by Terri Sutton
March 15, 2000

Gavin O'Connor's Sundance-endorsed, Fine Line-hyped debut film is an American independent of the old school. Another story of a charismatic, rootless mother and her sensible daughter, Tumbleweeds survives the usual curses of credit-card moviemaking with entrancing acting by nonstars and solid, detailed writing. Its scrappy grit and sweetness leave the almost identically plotted, very differently budgeted Sarandon-Portman bomb Anywhere But Here looking like the soulless, studio-bred monster of traditional indie lore. I find myself resisting that increasingly meaningless indie-good, major-bad argument, though: What I'm wishing for is a Tumbleweeds with some second takes, and thoughts--a film with the kind of beauty and patience that money, used judiciously, can buy.

It's distracting, for instance, that when bottle-blond Southerner Mary Jo (Janet McTeer) ditches her third or fourth abusive husband in North Carolina and drags her prepubescent daughter Ava (Kimberly J. Brown) to visit an old flame and potential husband in Missouri, they drive two-lane roads through cacti and sagebrush. The landscape finally makes sense after the marital prey proves unpromising, and Ava suggests Next Stop, San Diego. (Films about women seem to have gotten stuck on the drive Thelma and Louise took nine years ago, compulsively reenacting the radio sing-alongs and desert views, as if this were the white female version of the Underground Railroad.)

Thrifty location shots aside, I wonder how much of the economic desperation Tumbleweeds communicates is a factor of the filmmakers' lack of resources rather than their skill: Grit equals handheld camera with available light. Certainly there are murky scenes that would seem less interminable if we could see the actors' faces more clearly. (Shots don't have to look drab to convey drab.) Maybe O'Connor is too eager to draw the parallel between his fortuneless heroines' aspirations in enchanted California--i.e., film central--and his own.

On the other hand, shoving the camera down into the action gives the movie an intimacy and immediacy that Anywhere But Here strived for and never achieved. O'Connor allows award-winning stage actress McTeer to direct the film with Mary Jo's whirlwind moods; the viewer experiences their force like a hard push this way and that, just as Ava does. At one point, Mary Jo must placate the grumpy new beau she picked up in San Diego, and the wary way she folds her bright self away under soft, entreating condescension chills the bones. By comparison, the power of Sarandon's queen mother is more ornamental than felt; obsessed with Portman's princess looks, that film makes of Sarandon a garish embarrassment.

Brown, too, benefits from Tumbleweeds' people-sized dramatics, creating a steady daughter at once readable and complex. For one thing, she's not entirely steady. How could she be, with that mother? Ava and Mary Jo trade parts: Who's the parent and who's the child? Who's the adoring audience and who's the capricious star? Mother and daughter engage and enrage each other in turns, as the script deftly captures their corresponding maturations. Brown's Ava believably seduces both her drama teacher and a punky classmate: I can't help but cheer for a film that dares to celebrate plain-Jane teen sexuality, demystify menstruation and farts, and--more credibly than could Gwyneth--gender-bend Shakespeare.

Unfortunately, budget and something more arrogant keep Brown and McTeer from a supporting cast that's up to their exciting standard. Jay O. Sanders is okay as Mary Jo's co-worker and a Shakespeare-quoting friend to Ava. But the director himself plays Jack, Mary Jo's sideburned and self-absorbed San Diego boyfriend: Let's just say he should've taken a card from Kevin Smith's deck and stayed mute. It almost makes you yearn for ye olde Hollywood directorship-by-committee. Then, at least somebody might've fired his atonal acting ass (again, you don't convey inexpressiveness by being inexpressive).

Self-employment isn't O'Connor's only blind spot. As much as Anywhere But Here, this indie film ends up embracing the dust-bowl idea of California as the land of dreams fulfilled--a place where single women with few qualifications can eventually find an enjoyable job to support themselves and their offspring in the style they deserve. (A garden center assistant could afford that pillared, pretty house? Only in Hollywood--or Sioux Falls.) More ridiculously, Tumbleweeds pretends Southern California is Sioux Falls, complexion-wise. Finally, even the admirable McTeer has trouble convincing the viewer of her difficulties imagining life without a man. Millions do it every day. But, independent or major, movies about single women still weep and tear their hair, struggling to envision a choice beyond the bad boyfriend or the edge of the cliff.

 

Tumbleweeds starts Friday at the Uptown Theatre.

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