Janet Fitch’s novel, “White Oleander” takes cinematic form with the talents of Michelle Pfeiffer and Alison Lohman. Both actresses portray the selfish and confusing relationship of mother Ingrid and daughter Astrid Mognussen.
Ingrid is as intense an artist as a mother. In raising Astrid, she engrains her unforgiving and self-centered perspective. Astrid is in awe of her mother’s strength and beauty, but as the story develops the daughter becomes aware of how self serving those qualities can be. Ingrid’s mentality leads her to kill her unfaithful boyfriend and as a result sends Astrid into a series of foster homes. In this journey, Astrid witnesses the poison of loneliness.
Throughout the movie she visits her incarcerated mother and begins to analyze both the world she lives in and Ingrid’s ruthlessness. Astrid becomes increasingly independent of her mother’s ideas and more aware of her vindictive nature.
As such “White Oleander” is the journey of an adolescent girl trying to identify herself without any constant family or home. She adapts to the clothes and lifestyle of whatever environment she is put in, hoping to feel wanted. But as Astrid searches for her own acceptance she observes the consequences of being rejected. Both foster mothers depicted in the movie take extreme measures when the love of their spouses is threatened. In addition to Ingrid’s crime, Astrid’s outlook is a composed by the fatality of love.
The movie does well in not flattening the characters into good and evil. They are all desperate, but not even Ingrid is a villain. Pfeiffer is excellent at maintaining a respectable beauty while verbalizing the cruelest of lines. Still she is left a mystery at the end of the movie. Astrid is both strong and articulate but is constantly seeking motherly and romantic love and that unveils her vulnerability. All characters are played with depth and talent.
A downfall of the production may simply lie in that it plays too much like a book. The pastel colors of a beach house and the scarlet hues of a cheap flea market are sewn together with a million close-ups of Lohman. Her wide-eyed stare into the world she currently faces is overdone. There are more adjectives portrayed in the movie than action. “White Oleander” is far from the likes of chic-flic “The Ya-Ya Siterhood” but has an undoubtedly feminine taste. This is possibly because it centers on so many women or because a female might better relate to the messages of identity.
Yet “White Oleander” embeds a message of self-strength and the value of developing one’s own perspective. The audience will see at the end that Astrid is at home only when she creates that place for herself.