It’s a Close call
WILL this be the film that brings Glenn Close and Amy Adams long-overdue Oscars? If not, it won’t be for a lack of trying. In Ron Howard’s award-baiting saga, Adams does everything bar froth at the mouth as shouty, frizzy-haired, heroin-addicted single mother Bev Vance.
Close, slathered in old lady make-up, grins gummily as she spits out potty-mouthed nuggets of Appalachian wisdom as her fearsome mother “Mamaw”. I’m a big fan of both actors but, with a slight tweak, this could be a sketch show. Is Catherine Tate still making comedy? Mamaw could make a great redneck cousin for her foulmouthed Nan. At least the histrionics give the film some energy. Because there’s very little substance to the plot that screenwriter Vanessa Taylor culled from JD Vance’s memoir.
Our hero is Bev’s saintly son JD, who we follow as a troubled kid (Owen Asztalos) in 1990s Iowa and as a young
Yale law graduate (Gabriel Basso) in the early 2010s. But we know JD will make it so there’s little drama in the clashes between his violent, feckless mother and his strict, caring grandmother.
I’d never heard of Vance’s right-wing tome which apparently outlined the causes of poverty in the red states of America during the 2016 election.
But I’m pretty sure none of that features in the film.
Then again, if Netflix wanted to paint rust belt grievances in vivid colours, they wouldn’t have hired a sentimentalist like Ron Howard. He’s got Oscar pedigree but, if he were a pot of paint, he’d be B&Q’s own-brand magnolia.
Close, in old lady make-up, grins as she spits out nuggets of wisdom