Word: mcteer
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...plenty. Like Anywhere But Here, it's a mother-daughter tale, with an irresponsible, impulsive mom dragging her more mature, grounded daughter across the country. But Tumbleweeds succeeds where most mother-daughter sagas wimp out, because every moment seethes with vitality and honesty and excellent acting by leads Janet McTeer and Kimberly J. Brown make this a film to savor...
Mary Jo Walker (Janet McTeer) is an energetic, itinerant Southern woman; she's been married three times, and when her relationships end, she simply packs up moves herself and her daughter elsewhere. Twelve-year-old Ava is less than thrilled when her mom plucks her from life in West Virginia and takes her across the country to Starlight Beach, Calif.; Ava wants a real home and stability, and for her mom to meet the right man and finally settle down. Mary Jo moves herself and Ava in with Jack (Gavin O'Connor), a seemingly nice trucker; Ava makes friends...
Meantime, down the coast, near San Diego, Mary Jo Walker (Janet McTeer) and her daughter Ava (Kimberly J. Brown), having survived a more problematical journey west, struggle much more realistically for survival in Tumbleweeds. Mary Jo is fleeing an abusive marriage (her fourth), but can't quite escape her taste for sexy, damaged guys. In a film that moves with an easy, unforced pace, she settles in with a truck driver (played by director and co-writer Gavin O'Connor) who's good in bed but damply insistent on clockwork routine outside it. She has a job that matches...
...keeps mice, plays Romeo (that's not a misprint) in the school play, and though occasionally exasperated by her mother, adores her funky, spunky spirit. As do we, for McTeer, the English actress who stunned Broadway in A Doll's House two seasons back, is a wonder--sweet and fierce, a creature of good instincts and bad (but reparable) judgments. She's probably never going to get anywhere very grand, but she's going to get there intact. You suspect her child--her only true love--may do better than that. Meantime, we have this movie--full of acceptant, sidelong...
...Doll's House Just when you thought Ibsen's war-horse had breathed its last, director Anthony Page, translator Frank McGuinness and galvanizing star Janet McTeer brought it back to life in a brilliant Broadway production imported from London. Their triumph was to make us feel the wrenching human underpinnings of drama's most famous feminist battle...