Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38672 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-02-26
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Synopsis
WHITE OLEANDER, is the tale of an intense and toxic mother-daughter relationship, coupled with a look at the fundamentally skewed U.S. foster care system. When the beautiful photographer Ingrid Magnusson (Michelle Pfeiffer) is imprisoned for allegedly murdering a philandering boyfriend, her daughter Astrid (Alison Lohman) does her best to survive a string of foster homes where natural adolescent mistakes turn into land mines. Her first stop is the home of a born-again Christian, Starr (Robin Wright Penn, who is so good in this part she's physically unrecognisable.) Next, she is sent to the home of a clinically depressed actress, Claire Richards (Renee Zellweger, whose natural effervescence is delightfully disturbing here.) Claire uses Astrid to fill the void left by a roaming husband (Noah Wyle). Astrid juggles her list of changing homes with visits to Mummy Dearest in prison, while suffering flashbacks of the alleged murder.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful but chilling adaptation
Astrid has grown up in the shadow of her beautiful but manipulative mother, Ingrid. With no father on the scene, Ingrid is all that Astrid has, until she poisons a lover with the white oleander of the title. While Ingrid is sent to prison for life, Astrid is thrown into the chaos of the US foster system. She is first sent to the home of Starr, a recovering alcoholic and a born-again Christian. Astrid quickly adapts herself to her new surroundings and all seems fine, until her adolescent charms attract the attention of Starr's boyfriend. All hell breaks loose and Astrid ends up living in a government complex with other kids in the same situation, only much tougher and more aggressive. She quickly finds another home, however, with Claire, a depressive actress. Claire seems to be the mother that Astrid has always longed for: attentive, thoughtful, caring. But Ingrid is still lurking in the background and wastes no time in taking out this threat to her domination over Astrid. Ironically, this is what starts Astrid's real rebellion against her mother and her search for answers.

The film is a good adaptation of the book, though a lot of the grimmer parts (such as the underage sex and the harshness of being a foster child) have been toned down or cut out altogether. Alison Lohman is a wonderful Astrid: her wide eyes perfectly portray Astrid's vulnerability and hurt at what happens to her. She also morphs very well as Astrid takes on the role each mother assigns her: faithful accolyte, demure virgin, intelligent artist, street-wise market girl. Meanwhile, Michelle Pfeiffer has never been more chilling as Ingrid: the film makes good use of her icy beauty and sharp cheekbones to reveal Ingrid's self-absorption and cruelty. Robin Wright Penn is almost unrecognisable as the trailer trash Starr (in a good way) while Renee Zellweger is perfect for the sweet but ultimately vapid Claire (though she is very different from the Claire in the book, who looks more like Audrey Hepburn and thinks too much). Patrick Fugit makes the most of his small role as the only boy of her age that Astrid actually likes.

Buy if: you want a chick flick with a sharp edge.

Daughters trapped in their mothers' playthings
A girl born without a father and raised by a mother who is a real Machiavelli of love, has one day to face her own life through hell when her mother is sent to prison for the murder of her boy friend because he had to let her go on their last meeting because he had a date, which she of course could not accept. The girl knows all the horror there can be in the kind of institution she finds herself sent to or in the foster homes she ends up in. She is nothing but a substitute for something the foster parents do not have, or the dream that her presence is going to solve their own problems, or whatever. But the worst part is of course her mother who is, from behind the wings, pulling the strings that pretend to protect the girl whereas she is only treating her as a possession that has to be defended for future use. She thus more or less creates temptation or even death in those foster homes that could have helped her daughter. When this daughter finally realizes her mother's game it is by far too late and she can only sever the tie, the connection, the link, the bond. And it is then that she builds a compensation and pretends she finally understands that her mother loved her. When it becomes obvious the mother will not be granted an appeal or win the one she may be granted and that she will not be granted parole the daughter has to more or less make it sound as if she were responsible for her mother's crime, her mother's destitution and even her mother's continuing ordeal she deserves quite a lot. Such mothers are puppeteers with their children, daughters, and they turn their daughters into musketeers who are fighting with their own reflection in a mirror, with their own shadows, when it is not with their own mothers' shadows.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines