Anywhere But Here

USA 1999

Reviewed by Charlotte O'Sullivan

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Tired of life in Wisconsin, Adele August decides she and her 14-year-old daughter Ann should move to Los Angeles. There, Adele gets a job but doesn't earn enough for the lifestyle she covets. Ann settles into school but still misses her favourite cousin Benny, and finds her mother's mood swings difficult to cope with. Benny visits. Josh, a handsome dentist, calls for a date and he and Adele sleep together. When he fails to ring again, Adele becomes obsessed with him. Benny is killed in a car accident. After a trip home for the funeral, Adele quits her job and spirals into depression.

Shortly afterwards, Adele sneaks into an audition she has strong-armed Ann into attending, only to see Ann mimicking her. The pair row. Ann contacts her father; he's mistrustful and unenthusiastic. Despite their precarious economic situation, Ann's relationship with a boy at her school begins to flourish. In the meantime, her mother has found a new job and acquired a new suitor. Ann is accepted by a college on the East Coast but doesn't have enough money to go. Adele sells her beloved car, and gives the money to Ann.

Review

In-the-name-of-the-daughter movies form a genre all of their own. From such grimly fiendish noirs as Stella Dallas (1937) and Mildred Pierce (1945) to soupy, semi-comedic dramas like Terms of Endearment and Postcards from the Edge, all have at their centre a maniacally aspirational mother whose attempts to control her daughter create an emotional competition between them. The energy it requires to manage the daughter's economic and sexual well-being invariably endows the mother with a vitality that makes her seem socially vulgar, oversexed, but most important of all, alive. However virtuous or demonic, the daughter is destined to play second fiddle. Smoke director Wayne Wang is clearly familiar with this type of woman's picture (there's a direct reference to Terms of Endearment). Keeping the novel's first-person narration - encouraging us to believe the daughter Ann's version of events is the definitive one - he seems keen to redress the balance in her favour.

This version can be reduced to a simple formula: daughter capable and desirable, mother incompetent, dishonest, superficial, jealous, hysterical and pitiful. A few scenes surprise us - such as the one where Ann's mother Adele admits she can't "cope" with going to the posh Christmas party she had previously angled an invite for. It's like a car alarm being switched off. In the horrible ensuing quiet Susan Sarandon's familiar beat-up eyes and toffee-ice-cream voice appear too vulnerable for her suddenly small body and you long for the protective high volume to be restored. Most of the time you see her being knocked back; here we discover how she behaves when she's welcomed. You don't pity her, but for the first time you understand her. Such glimpses of Adele's hidden life are all-too rare. Like the gruff, paternal traffic cop whom mother and daughter meet on Christmas Day, we're asked instead to chuckle and roll our eyes at Adele's eccentricities. There's nothing seriously wrong with her; she just needs to listen to more of the 'good' men in her life. When at the end of the film the cop tells Adele to do right by her daughter, she does.

Sarandon can't transform this kind of fluff into drama, but it's Natalie Portman you feel really sorry for. There's nothing for her to do here. Ann is your typical American success story - a naturally 'classy' individual who resists her mother's attempts to twist the truth. She also overcomes all obstacles in her path, inspiring admiration wherever she goes. Her one rejection - from her father - can be blamed on her mother. Prickly and suspicious when she rings him, dad is unable to separate the two women in his mind - something the film achieves all too easily. As the tag line says, this is a story about a mother who knows best, and a daughter who knows better.

The trouble with this kind of wish-fulfilment is that it's excluding. The film wants us to love Ann but also to envy her and the two sit together uneasily. It's impossible to take Adele seriously, but that doesn't mean you identify with Ann. In fact, by the time she's being waved off at the airport to her brilliant future ("I love you", "I love you too, sweetie"), you may, like me, be praying for a plane crash.

Adele's sacrificing of her car is the last straw. Ann mentions dreams in which she cuts off her mother's feet. In giving up her car - her mobility - it's as if Adele cuts off her own feet. In Stella Dallas we're allowed to wonder at the world Barbara Stanwyck's daughter has been fed into. This film sheds no such ambiguous light on a privileged East Coast education. Adele's self-sacrifice, in other words, gets the full thumbs-up.

Mildred Pierce and Stella Dallas' camp melodrama can of course be improved upon, but Wang and his particular brand of schmaltz prove unequal to the task. As the credits roll, Ann says of Adele, "When she dies, the world will be flat." In its eagerness to give voice to the overshadowed daughter, the film never allows the mother to live. Flat is precisely the word one would use to describe this.

Credits

Director
Wayne Wang
Producer
Laurence Mark
Screenplay
Alvin Sargent
Based on the book by Mona Simpson
Director of Photography
Roger Deakins
Editor
Nicholas C. Smith
Production Designer
Donald Graham Burt
Music
Danny Elfman
©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Production Company
Fox 2000 Pictures presents a Laurence Mark production
Executive Producer
Ginny Nugent
Associate Producer
Petra Alexandria
Production Co-ordinators
Montez A. Monroe
Additional Photography Unit:
Jenna Stephens
Unit Production Manager
Donna E. Bloom
Location Managers
Kristan Wagner
Eric Klosterman
Las Vegas 2nd Unit:
Kristi Frankenheimer-Davis
Location Associate
Sara Burton
Assistant Directors
Betsy Magruder
Jonathan McGarry
Rusty Mahmood
Additional Photography Unit:
Molly Mayeux
Script Supervisors
Marion Tumen
Additional Photography Unit:
Marilyn Giardino-Zych
Casting
Victoria Thomas
Associate:
Wendy Weidman
Voice:
Loop De Loop
Director of Photography
Additional Photography Unit:
Paul Elliott
Camera Operators
Clint Dougherty
Las Vegas 2nd Unit:
James Coker
Additional Photography Unit:
Dulce 'Candy' Gonzalez
Digital Composites
POP Film
Special Effects Co-ordinators
R. Bruce Steinhemmer
Additional Photography Unit:
Joseph Viskocil
Special Effects Foreman
Dave Kelsey
Special Effects
Dale Ettema
Dan Edwards
Jeffrey C. Machit
Jeffrey D. Knott
Scott Garcia
Additional Photography Unit:
Marvin Felton
Additional Editing
Nicole Smith
Art Director
Kevin Constant
Set Designers
Robert Harbour
Theodore Sharps
Set Decorators
Barbara Munch
Additional Photography Unit:
Sandy Struth
Textile Artist
Phyllis Thurber-Moffitt
Costume Designer
Betsy Heimann
Costume Supervisor
Lori Stilson
Make-up
Key:
Robert J. Mills
Additional:
Cyndi Reece Thorne
Hair
Key:
Bonnie Clevering
Additional Photography Unit:
Susan Lipson
Joann S. Chaney
Titles/Opticals
Pacific Title/Mirage
End Credits
Scarlet Letters
Featured Vocalist
Poe
Additional Vocals
Bryony Atkinson
Inara George
Score Conductor/ Orchestrations
Steve Bartek
Additional Orchestrations
Edgardo Simone
Music Supervisor
Deva Anderson
Music Editor
Ellen Segal
Score Engineer/Mixer
Bobby Fernandez
Midi Programming/ Preparation
Marc Mann
Soundtrack
"Anywhere But Here" by k.d. Lang, Rick Nowels, performed by k.d. Lang;
"Surfin' Safari" by Brian Wilson, Mike Love, performed by The Beach Boys; "Strange Wind" by Poe, Danny Elfman, performed by Poe; "Leaving's Not Leaving" by Diane Warren, performed by LeAnn Rimes; "Ice Cream (Freedom Sessions Version)" by/performed by Sarah McLachlan; "Up and Down" by Pete Stringfellow, Kyle Beeler, Jason Beltz, performed by B.B. Swing; "Be Optimistic" by Walter Bullock, Harold Spina; "Amity" by/performed by Carly Simon, Sally Taylor; "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly" (trad); "Oh Christmas Tree" arranged/performed by Billy Martin; "I Wish" by/performed by Lisa Loeb; "Furniture" by/performed by Kacy Crowley; "Walking" by Darren Pearson, Elizabeth Overs, performed by Pocketsize; "Scream and Shout" by/performed by 21st Century Girls; "Chotee" by Bif Naked and The X Factor, performed by Bif Naked; "The More I See You" by Mack Gordon, Harry Warren; "I'ho abbandonato" by Giacomo Puccini, M. Praga, D. Oliva, Luigi Illica; "I Will Remember You" by Sarah McLachlan, Seamus Egan, Dave Merenda; "Everything Around Me Is Changing" by/performed by Sinéad Lohan; "Twisted Road" by Patty Griffin, Jay Joyce, Doug Lancio, Chris Feinstein, performed by Patty Griffin; "Come Here" by Lili Haydn, Rick Boston, performed by Lili Haydn; "Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss; "Dancing with You All by Myself" by Greg Beattie, Victoria Crebbin, performed by Victoria Blythe, Kevin Harris; "Watching Lovers" by Bernie Meisinger, Charlie Gigliotti, performed by Bernie Meisinger; "You Don't Know What Love Is" by Don Raye, Gene De Paul; "Free" by/performed by Marie Wilson
Sound Mixer
Joseph Geisinger
Re-recording Mixers
Lora Hirschberg
Gary A. Rizzo
Re-recordist
Jennifer Barin
Mix Technicians
Mark Lindow
Brandon Proctor
Kent Sparling
Supervising Sound Editor
Michael Silvers
Dialogue Editor
Dianna Stirpe
Sound Effects Editors
J.R. Grubbs
Sam Hinckley
Susan Sanford
ADR
Recordists:
David Lucarelli
Diane Linn
Jim Marchionne
Engineers:
Bobby Johanson
Mark DeSimone
Mixers:
Charleen Richards
Greg Steele
Foley
Artists:
Dennie Thorpe
Jana Vance
Recordist:
Frank 'Pepe' Merel
Mixer:
Tony Eckert
Editor:
Sandina Bailo-Lape
Stunt Co-ordinator
Glory Fioramonti
Animals Provided by
Boone's Animals For Hollywood
Cast
Susan Sarandon
Adele August
Natalie Portman
Ann August
Bonnie Bedelia
Carol
Shawn Hatosy
Benny
Hart Bochner
Josh Spritzer
Caroline Aaron
Gail Letterfine
Corbin Allred
Peter
John Diehl
Jimmy
Paul Guilfoyle
George Franklin
John Carroll Lynch
Jack Irwin
Eileen Ryan
Lillian
Heather DeLoach
Ellen
Ashley Johnson
Sarah
Heather McComb
Janice
Elizabeth Moss
Rachel
Michael Milhoan
cop
Rachel Wilson
Sylvia
Ray Baker
Ted
Faran Tahir
Hisham
Shishir Kurup
voice of Hisham
Samantha Goldstein
Ann August, 4 years
Scott Burkholder
man with Mercedes
Yvonna Kopacz
assistant hotel manager
Eva Amurri
Kieren Van Den Blink
Jennifer Castle
girls on TV
Bebe Drake
Mrs Rush
Allison Sie
teacher
Sharona Alperin
real estate agent
Mary Ellen Trainor
homeowner
Stephanie Niznik
waitress
Lindley Harrison
Janice's mother
Bob Sattler
Bernie
Nina Leichtling
Josh's wife
Jay Harrington
waiter
Andrew Bowles
mourner
Rick Hurst
reverend
Stephen Berra
Hal
Nina Barry
casting assistant
Cricky Long
casting executive
Lillian Adams
Jack's mother
Megan Mullally
woman buying car
George Peck
man with luggage
Katharine Boyd
Monique Donnelly
Ricky Felix Godinez
Shana Halligan
Ian Joyce
Megan Joyce
Megan McGinnis
Cody Page
Jonathan Redford
Eve Reinhardt
Fletcher Sheridan
Christopher Snyder
choir members
[uncredited]
Thora Birch
Mary, Ann's friend
Certificate
12
Distributor
20th Century Fox (UK)
10,237 feet
113 minutes 45 seconds
Dolby
Colour/Prints by
DeLuxe
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011