Blue Car (2003)

The lead female character is so boring and lacking in vitality. I can understand an old guy being attracted to a vivacious, experienced young lady, but why this one, other than her being an easy mark? If an old guy ever gets a chance to be with her, how would she even know how to roll with it, and satisfy his interests? Answer: she won't.Another reviewer mentioned the lack of decent adults portrayed. But her mom was not so bad, and the owner of the clothing shop was totally decent. The girl was the cynical one in that situation. If you haven't seen it yet, then keep a watch for that.I do think the lead actress's facial expressions and body language were accurate for that type. She did that stuff well. I normally love David Strathairn, but what a bore he was in this one. No emotion. I'm not blaming that on him. It could have been the writers or director. An English teacher should be passionate and animated. This guy was stoic and controlled, like most of David's characters. I guess he was the alienated writer type. That's one way of looking at it.Even in the crucial scenes at the end, he doesn't really let loose and kick a wall or cry. That would have made this film more believable. Although I guess we were supposed to assume he had a history of getting "close" to students. So he had been down this road before perhaps.Scenery and music are not too significant here, although I suppose the background music helped create the somber vibe. But I have no recollection of it, and I just saw it a few minutes ago.So its' impact was subtle.Many small films attempt to show that life is messy and rarely follows the script we write for ourselves. This one did that satisfactorily. The male lead's answer at the end, to the question of how he expected it all to turn out, was more than telling. There's a good line in there about "being transformed." That was his plan.Ultimately, like John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're making other plans." I'd skip this one, unless you feel some connection to the storyline. The relationship is awkward and disturbing, and the usury practiced by various characters will just depress the heck out of you. it's a downer.

Agnes Bruckner is a high-school senior from what is now commonly called a dysfunctional family. Her father has left the family. Her mother, Margaret Colin, is holding down a twelve-hour job and going to school at night. And Agnes must care for her little sister, Regan Arnold, who seems to have childhood schizophrenia. Her friends all have unethical quirks and Bruckner herself is given to shoplifting.Her only outlet seems to be poetry and she comes up with an impressive one she calls "Blue Car." This gets the attention of her teacher in the Advanced Placement class, David Strathairn, and he encourages her to enter a poetry contest to be held in Tampa. She's accepted as a contestant.Her home life being as rotten as it is, Bruckner invests a good deal of herself in the relationship with her teacher. He's reserved, friendly but cool at the same time, a perfect gentleman who may go places some day because, as he tells her, he's writing a novel. He keeps the manuscript in a briefcase and won't allow anyone to read it.Bruckner must sneak away to the contest in Tampa because her mother, preoccupied with her own problems and trying to keep the family on a tight budget, has put the kibosh on the trip.In Tampa, Bruckner runs into Strathairn and his family -- a wife and two kids. When the two are alone, Strathairn gives her a kiss and asks if it's alright. Bruckner assents, the two wind up in bed, and Strathairn deflowers her, somewhat to her discomfort.SPOILER.Afterward, Bruckner begins poking through Strathairn's briefcase, flips through the manuscript of the novel, and finds all the pages blank, except for a few which have stick-man drawings in the margins. A poem that Strathairn has claimed as his own turns out to have been written by Rilke.When her turn comes to read her poem before a vast audience, including Strathairn and his family, she lets him have it. She's discarded "Blue Car" and substituted another that is a raw, bleeding attack on the phony Strathairn.I didn't really care for the film that much, though I applaud its quiet intensity. It's familiar territory, the youth disillusioned by a mentor. We've seen it in, oh, "The Flamingo Kid," "Hearts of the West," and others. But at least this is from the point of view of a young girl who finds respite from real life in poetry. If I have to watch another movie about teen-aged boys trying to make money and get laid, I think I'll vomit.Strathairn is fine as the distant teacher trying to keep his hormones in check, and Margaret Colin, as always, is good in the role of the distraught mother. Even the little sister gives a believable performance, though she's only about six. Bruckner, on the other hand, is bulkily pretty but wears a hangdog expression throughout, as if playing an instrument on which there was only one note.I don't know if the writer/director, Karen Moncrieff, intended it or whether it stems from some brutalization of my own emotional apparatus but I felt considerable sympathy for both Margaret Colin's super-tense Mom and David Strathairn's shamed, phony novelist. Imagine the teacher's character. So lacking in self esteem that he must invent an alter identity for himself -- the promising novelist -- but feeling so low about the trick that he doesn't brag about it, just let's it fall casually and infrequently into conversations. What a tightrope the guy is walking, like a gay guy not out of the closet. The merest HINT in Bruckner's final poem, the slightest pin prick letting him know that she's uncovered his secret, would have brought him down. Instead, she hits him over the head with a crowbar.Strathairn has learned something, namely that you can only carry on a pretense for so long and that eventually your fraud, however modest, is uncovered -- especially by some nosy young girl who goes poking around in your personal effects. But what has Bruckner learned? That you can't trust anyone but yourself? I don't know if that moral calculus all works out.

I haven't watched a movie in weeks and last night I was working on the computer when this movie came on TV. I started watching out of the corner of my eye but ended up becoming engrossed! The movie unfolds like a leonard cohen song... I wouldn't describe it as a tragedy, in-spite of all the tragedy that occurs in it... I would describe this as a journey movie or self discovery movie... or maybe just a movie about poetry.The plot is, i think, deliberately, predictable. The teacher's brilliant acting hints at his intentions from the very start... yet he is never portrayed as a predator until the brilliantly disturbing sex scene, where for a few seconds he looses all trace of humanity! The ending to the movie is positive and the movies subtleties kept unravelling long after I turned off the TV There are a lot of great things in the movie... in fact I think its worth watching for the poetry alone!

I first heard about it from my Aunt Janice Sterling, towards the end of the summer, she said that her son Dustin was in it, though I never heard of it. She found a copy of the DVD and sent it to me to watch. I must say it is tame compared to a lot of other "R" movies, I liked it so I definitely recommend you buy it if you haven't already.The acting in it was really superb, though the Scene where Lilly was cutting holes in herself was a bit disturbing to me. And the Theft scenes were a bit repetitive. I loved the reconciliation scene that she had with her mom towards the end. All in all it is worth the money to buy it.