Lonely Truckers, Lot Lizards and What Alice Found
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
This week's spotlighted DVD Tuesday pick is
What Alice Found, with some virtual-discussion starters to get the conversation going.
Here's what got me thinking about
What Alice Found (2003). The release of
The Night Listener (2006), based on
Armistead Maupin's novelization of his real-life experience of being duped into an intense phone friendship with a
"dying teenager" whose upcoming memoir of vicious abuse turns out to be an elaborate fraud, recalled the unmasking of the
J.T. LeRoy hoax. The recent
film of "LeRoy"'s autobiographical novel about his abusive childhood at the hands of his mom the "lot lizard" (a truck-stop hooker), starring and directed by
Asia Argento, in turn jogged my memory of this super low-budget indie. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should do my bit to let people know it's out there.
Writer-director A. Dean Bell's shot-on-DV feature begins in Milford, New Hampshire, where recent high-school graduate Alice, a poor teenager facing a future no brighter than the fluorescent lights at her soul-sucking supermarket gig, impulsively steals some money and hits the road, planning to join a friend who's left to study marine biology at a Florida college. But her car breaks down and she's forced to rely on the kindness of strangers, the apparently kindly, middle-aged retirees Sandra (
Judith Ivey) and Bill, who offer to drive south in their RV, though it will have to be at their own leisurely pace. Alice's tumble through the looking glass lands her in a world where long-faced husbands like Bill pimp fading Southern belles like Sandra to lonely long-haul truck drivers, and fresh-faced youngsters like herself are both opportunities and opportunists.
The hard-sell DVD cover notwithstanding, the film never quite becomes a thriller; it's a sleepy, creepy character study in which the nicest characters are flawed and the most deeply flawed characters aren't entirely wicked. First-timer Emily Grace is a natural as Alice, a slightly chubby girl who's not quite as naive as she's taken for, but not as street-smart as she thinks; her second film is currently in postproduction. The only high-profile name in the cast is veteran character actress Ivey, who makes Sandra a contradictory and thoroughly believable mix of maternal fussiness and hardheaded pragmatism. It's a small film, but it stuck with me, and I hope Bell, who has yet to make a follow-up, will deliver on its promise.
Things to consider:
What Alice Found is a warped cautionary tale about life on the dirty back roads: What's the appeal of road movies?
Why would a highly respected actress like Ivey accept a part in a low-budget film whose subject could easily be perceived as sleazy?
What's the appeal of slice-of-lowlife stories?
Bell tells his story about the underside of American life without apology or pretense: Why would someone concoct a hoax as elaborate as that of J.T. LeRoy and why would so many smart people buy into it?
Remember: Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Previous DVD blogs:
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
This week's new DVD releases
