Having torn himself from his roots with more than physical distance, prodigal son George (Alessandro Nivola) makes a long overdue return to his rural North Carolina home six months after his marriage to Madeline (Embeth Davidtz), an older, exotically beguiling, South African-raised, Chicago-based gallery owner whose niche is “outsider” art. It’s difficult to determine in Junebug whether George’s homecoming is only a pretext for Madeline to court a neighbouring autistic painter of orgiastic Civil War canvases (Frank Hoyt Taylor) on the verge of discovery, or whether George truly believes the time has come to reintegrate, with his new wife, back into the family.
Upon arrival, George quickly dissolves into the woodwork, becoming either absent or asleep for much of the extended reunion, offering only the occasional, effortlessly ingratiating gesture, such as singing at a church function where he’s all too able to win back the community’s heart. It’s Madeline, rather, a much more curious and conspicuous presence, who attempts to forge some bridge between the two worlds. Her openness, sophistication, beauty and intellect land softly on carpenter father Eugene (Scott Wilson), while being an exaggerated source of threat to mother Peg (Celia Wilson) and deeply frustrated brother Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie). And she attains idol status with Johnny’s pregnant and extremely excitable wife Ashley (Amy Adams), who develops a monumental sisterly crush on Madeline before she even arrives. Yet Madeline also exudes a well-trained patience, her best intentions and apparent duplicity remain subterranean and inextricable.
But then there’s much left uncertain in Junebug. The lovely tension between ambiguity and specificity, especially regional, is nurtured by the clearly divergent but complementary interests of director Phil Morrison’s fresh, intriguing approach and playwright Angus McLachlan’s only slightly more traditional script. This uncertainty arises from the most natural sources: a trust in action over words, an understanding of the complexity of shifting one’s status within family, and the fullest immersion of atmosphere and place into the flesh of a story—something wondrously evident in the intermediate scenes that hauntingly supply the film with transitions and base.
Junebug is also centreless in terms of character, yet neither Madeline, an outsider who could be seen as exploiting Southern culture, nor any single member of George’s family is unsympathetic or sacrificed to quirky caricature—not even the compulsively chatty and unconsciously transparent Ashley, a risky role brilliantly and compassionately executed by Adams. Every major player in Junebug finds a balance between being seemingly stuck in a role and trying, with various levels of desperation, to transcend it, and Morrison makes no judgements to pigeonhole them with. Shooting on his home turf, Morrison, like David Gordon Green (Undertow), has an eye for local colour and community dynamics that’s completely divorced from condescension or exoticism.
However, for all of its drifting, there is a central event that grounds Junebug, that gives it shape and an emotional anchor and that implicitly questions the compatibility of art and family. And while these contrasting and generally oppositional forces only merge in Morrison’s fixed images of homes and landscapes, they evoke stability in a way that initially reads as endearing but come to represent the deeper sadness permeating the family, a sadness that quietly reverberates within Eugene and even trails behind George as he escapes and tries to dismiss the experience. This is a beautiful little film that somehow manages to be both heartfelt and obscure. Just lucid enough to sting, it resonates on a number of levels, is accessible to anyone who’s ever felt uneasy amongst their folks and poses difficult questions while never proclaiming anything. It also features dreamy variations of Yo La Tengo’s “Green Arrow” on the soundtrack, a tune that lingers in memory like a persistent mist and brings all of Junebug’s most enigmatic images back to mind over and over. (Josef Braun, Vueweekly, Edmonton, January 15, 2006)
Facebook