It’s about time Joan Allen got a chance to show her chops like she does in ‘The Upside of Anger.’
|
The Upside of Anger
Starring Joan Allen and Kevin Costner. Written and directed by Mike Binder. Rated R. |
Diary of a Mad White Woman
Joan Allen is unforgettably furious in the terribly funny The Upside of Anger.
By KRISTIAN LIN
Despite Joan Allen’s sterling reputation as an actress, we haven’t seen true greatness from her since she played Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone’s 1995 presidential biopic. In the intervening years, she’s done highbrow projects (The Crucible) and Hollywood fluff (The Bourne Supremacy), choosing her roles discriminately, although last year’s The Notebook didn’t exactly cry out for her talents. She was always good, but her movies never gave her a chance to deliver the kind of heaven-storming performance for the ages that we all knew she was capable of. Now, though, a tiny low-budget domestic dramedy called The Upside of Anger lets her do just that, and if she and the film aren’t remembered at next year’s Oscars, it’ll be the biggest crime since, well, this year’s Oscars.
She plays Terry Wolfmeyer, a well-heeled stay-at-home mom whose husband suddenly leaves one day in 2001 without a word of explanation, presumably to live the cliché and run off to Sweden with his secretary. Not entirely surprised by this, she spends the next three years dealing with her troublesome emotions and her even more troublesome four adolescent daughters, of whom she says, “One of them hates me, and two or three are leaning that way.” The girls are all rebelling to some extent. The eldest, Hadley (Alicia Witt), has been concealing the existence of her boyfriend for three years; sardonic Andy (Erika Christensen) passes up college for a job at a radio station; aspiring ballerina Emily (Keri Russell) wants to go to a performing arts school while her mom wants her at the state university; and Lavender (Evan Rachel Wood), the socially conscious youngest girl, has rejected her name in favor of “Popeye” — not much of an improvement, really.
This is a quantum leap forward for writer-director Mike Binder. His shrill, juvenile male-fantasy comedies like The Sex Monster and his short-lived tv show The Mind of the Married Man give no hint of the maturity and restraint he displays here. With no previous experience of writing from a woman’s perspective, he thoroughly captures Terry’s frame of mind as she fills her time by drinking too much and staring daggers at the walls. Her messy, undignified outbursts are so much more truthful than the pat sentiments of equivalent Hollywood movies or in that infernally overhyped Diary of a Mad Black Woman. The comic set pieces here are both insightful and savory; check out the disastrous sit-down between Terry and Hadley’s boyfriend’s parents or the explosive fantasy sequence that is the film’s biggest laugh.
Binder’s previous work was always marred by his presence in the starring roles — as an actor, he always comes off as wormy. Here he makes Allen the center of things, and she plays the part like a house afire. There’s a truly priceless bit when Terry, fresh from a screaming argument with Emily, walks in on Andy in bed with her boss Shep (played by Binder). It’s 20 seconds of sheer genius, as Terry’s choked and convulsed by each of her successive reactions — initial confusion, dawning horror, burning sensation in her eyeballs, grief at her daughter’s stupidity, boiling-over frustration with all her kids, self-pity on a cosmic scale — before finally settling on a look of pure murderous rage at the guy. That bit is not only terribly funny, it’s also emblematic of the many different shades of the character’s anger, a spectrum of moods that keeps the film fresh.
The director also sparks Allen as a fellow actor; they share a terrific scene in which Terry slaps Shep’s face and gives him the speech about older men who date younger women, only to have him come back with a rant on that subject that makes a certain amount of sense without making Shep any less of a sleaze. The actresses playing the daughters are all strong, particularly in the scenes where they hang out as a group — they really have the vibe down as sisters. There’s even an excellent performance from Kevin Costner as Terry’s neighbor, a former baseball star who puts the moves on her after her husband leaves. This role puts Costner in touch with his loopy sense of humor, and he marvelously delineates the contradictions of a character who’s way more layered than his goofy, beer-swilling, pot-smoking exterior lets on. It isn’t the dull, supportive boyfriend part you usually see in these films; when Terry groundlessly accuses him of manipulating her daughters, he kicks down her bathroom door and declares, “I’m sick of being your bitch!”
Not all of this movie works — Popeye’s attempts to seduce a boy at school who thinks he’s gay (Dane Christensen) don’t lead anywhere, and her voice-over narration is sophomorically written, which is true to the character but unenlightening. Still, The Upside of Anger is a comedy for grown-ups, built to rise or fall on its star, and Joan Allen’s fierce, vibrant, uniquely uncorked performance makes something joyful out of so much bitterness.
Email this Article...
