Life with moms
Hollywood used to be highly efficient at turning out enjoyable melodramas, but that hasn't been the case for such a long time that White Oleander feels like an anomaly. It's a film about the struggles of a teenage girl against unreasonable odds--a mother who's a convicted murderer, and a series of foster homes, each of which poses its own set of challenges.
The movie is a pop-feminist melodrama. The heroine, Astrid (Alison Lohman), was raised by a single mom, Ingrid, a powerful, manipulative woman (Michelle Pfeiffer). Of the four highly distinctive people with whom Astrid forms significant relationships, three are her foster mothers--one (Robin Wright Penn) a sexual competitor, one (Renée Zellweger) a generous and loving person fatally dependent on her husband, and one (Svetlana Efremova) a tough immigrant who not only encourages the girl's independence but expects it. (The fourth is a boy she meets at an orphanage between placements, a graphic artist played touchingly by Patrick Fugit of Almost Famous.)
The secondary subject of the film, women's relationships, links up with the first, the protagonist's coming of age, as Astrid comes to see her own development largely in relation--and mostly in opposition--to the older women.
