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At the Movies

 A great script is a ticket to another world, and you carry the characters with you for a few weeks. 


"American Woman" seems to borrow from Richard Linklater's "Boyhood," although it's less slow, less self-indulgent than "Boyhood."

A woman, Deb, sits with her adolescent daughter. The two are talking about dresses for an upcoming date. Deb had her daughter when she was sixteen--and, at sixteen, the daughter went ahead and had a son. Everyone is together under one roof. (Did this then lead to "Mare of Easttown"?)

We think we're going to be watching a parent/child film--but, within a few minutes, a random murder occurs. Deb is now without her kid, and she must raise the grandchild on her own.

Over two hours, we track Deb through bad relationships, despair, drunken tantrums, betrayals, celebrations. Deb ends things with one terrible man after a confrontation with the man's wife. ("You think you're special? You're the first of his whores to show up at his house?") But the successor man is toxic in his own way; an interlude about domestic abuse pretty clearly has ties to the Patricia Arquette plot from Linklater's aforementioned "Boyhood." A third partner--in the body of Aaron Paul, from "Breaking Bad"--seems perfect, but the screenwriter is too wily to let Deb have a simple, tidy, happy ending.

The film is a portrait of a hero, and it's also a smart depiction of one family. Deb's sister lives across the street; she is the indispensable Christina Hendricks, from "Mad Men," and she often turns up to scold Deb. ("I saw a car pull out of your driveway around 4 am today....") The two sisters fight and joke together; the fights dovetail with the jokes, and you feel like you're watching actual people, related-by-blood. Deb's mother, Amy Madigan (from "Field of Dreams"), turns up at a wedding to say, "Deb, you're really doing this after just eight weeks of dating?") Deb becomes fierce: "You think you're going to talk me out of my choice at this last minute?" Mom misses the anger and just responds candidly: "Yes. I thought I'd try."

The script is still flawed; don't get me started on the serial killer. But it's nice to see a writer trying new things. And you get a dream cast in this movie.
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