Junebug (2005)

Junebug captures the traumas of returning to one's home town. It also studies family life in a mature, reflective way. The pressure felt by the characters is rendered in a quietly suffocating way: Phil Morrison who directed the film is a perceptive interpreter of what really hurts us in our everyday lives. Because that's what the film is about - everyday life. There is no big-big drama here, just the situations that turn life upside down. The film starts with a newly-wed couple arriving in the small town where the husband's family lives. The wife, Madeline,  is an art dealer, and they're there because she wants to check out a local eccentric. She hasn't met the husband's, George's, family before, and the awkwardness that arises between them is enormous. They are afraid of this big-city creature. Madeline is afraid of making the wrong impression on George's family: she is afraid of being seen as aloof.

It is this awkwardness that occupies the center of the movie. Madeline is trying to be friendly, to be accommodating, while George is initially embarrassed, only to grow into his old habits later on. The patriarch is a withdrawn loner and his wife is hostile towards the new family member. Their son Johnny also lives in the house with his ebullient high school sweetheart, now pregnant. She is the one who takes the edge of the tension in the family with her sweet laugh. She treats Madeline as a new sister. Or does she - would it be more correct to say that her innocent ways heightens the tension?

Morrison approaches this tricky family situation with an almost Leigh-ian inclination to see hope even in a constellation that appears locked or hostile. If this was set in Britain, Junebug could most definitively be taken for one of Mike Leighs class-sensitive films about the tensions of everyday life.

Junebug works with unspoken emotions. Madeline puts on a smiley face - and the question remains: is that a fair description of her? Is she really putting on a face, acting a brave, mature part? George is equally hard to read. We see his silent disappointments, and at least I am all the time waiting for some major eruption of emotion. Then there's his brother, Johnny, who seems to spend all of his time buried in angry silence - he seems to grow into the type of person his father already is. The film delves into all of these people's feelings so that we gradually learn more about their relationships and their attitudes. This is a film in which almost everyone look at themselves as outsiders, as misfits. We get a strange perspective on these familial tensions as the artist whom Madeline comes to check out is also presented as a full-blown character. He is a lonely man, and the well-behaved art dealer tries to make up her mind whether he is a lunatic or whether he an outsider that can be understood by commercial art circles. In this way, the topic is embellished with yet another take on the feeling of not fitting in.

One of the things Junebug has in common with the films of Mike Leigh is that we are constantly encouraged to re-evaluate our understanding of the characters. What is the matter with George's dad? Is Johnny's girlfriend a dumb bimbo? Does Madeline think she is better than everybody else?

In other words: the focus lies not just on the drama that evolves between these people, but also how you as a viewer respond to the changes that the film deals with. Why do I see this person as so repulsive? What would be a fair description of her? Junebug is a quiet and also - I rather hesitate to say it because it sounds so boring - sober film. Sober in the best sense: it calls us to look at ourselves.