Film of the week
Juno (12A)
Star rating: ****
Dir: Jason Reitman
With: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney
Watch the trailer here
In Roman mythology, the goddess Juno is often represented as a tough, matronly old bird. She had to appear resilient - this was the patron saint of BC women, there to give them comfort as they endured the gruelling business of being female in the dark days before epidurals and ready-mixed G&Ts.
The Juno of Jason Reitman's truly outstanding film, in contrast, resembles nothing so much as a Bratz doll. Tiny, dressed in a hoodie and jeans, she looks as if opening a carton of milk would be too much of a challenge. Don't judge this goddess on appearances, however. Ellen Page's Juno may not be be much of a mover and shaker, but she might well rock your world.
Page is in the running for a Best Actress Oscar, Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) is nominated as Best Director, his film Best Picture and Diablo Cody, in her first feature venture, best screenplay. With phenomenal takings at the US box office - $100m and counting - Juno is generating the kind of Little Miss Sunshine hysteria that might suggest it's over-hyped. And now it's over here. Having seen it twice, I still have some doubts, but in a marketplace stuffed with duds, Juno is on the whole the real deal - a bold, smart, big-hearted drama that's equal parts moving and amusing.
Juno MacGuff, not to put too fine a point on it, is up the duff courtesy of Paulie (Michael Cera, of Superbad infamy). It's bad luck in all sorts of ways - it was their first time, they are both 16 and still at school. Juno at first appears to treat this momentous event as if it's a mere pothole on life's highway. She's so laid back when telling her best friend that the pal enquires: "Is this for real, for real?" Among teenagers, enquiries don't get more serious.
In the early stages there's much about the character of Juno that's hard to believe. Holden Caulfield, that teen rebel from an earlier age, would think her a bit of a phoney. The way she speaks, in contrived, all-round-the-houses sentences with a wisecrack rate that would put Groucho Marx to shame, doesn't ring true. On those young shoulders a too old head sits. It's like watching a ventriloquist act: Page the teenager opens her mouth and the words of Cody the older, worldly scriptwriter tumble out. To Cody's credit, this changes as the pregnancy lumbers on and Juno's shell is chipped away, revealing the vulnerable girl within.
With limited options, Juno settles on what she thinks is not just the lesser of all evils but something that will do herself and others good - having her baby adopted. Enter childless couple Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), who promise Juno's baby the sun and the moon and the stars, or at the very least a swish home in the burbs. A lawyer is drafted in and everything looks signed and sealed, pending the delivery of the precious goods. Except nothing is ever quite that simple.
Reitman's film is a curious article. It's achingly liberal, from the indie music soundrack to its slacker heroine, yet it shrieks conservative family values. Like Knocked Up, that other morality tale about unplanned pregnancy, it could be placed in the pro-life corner - a right-wing wolf in trendy lefty maternity clothing. Yet as reactions to it stateside have shown, this is a movie that defies easy categorisation. America's religious right might have praised the film's position on abortion, but they hated almost everything else, from its depiction of teenagers having sex, to the way Juno's family react to her pregnancy.
Any picture that can annoy left and right must be doing something right. Like Juno as she waddles down the corridor in high school to the glares and sniggers of her peers, all this movie asks is not to be taken at face value (or in Juno's case, bump value). If Reitman is saying anything, it's that life is messy and the solutions are often only marginally less so, but the best families do the best they can.
Of Juno's family, Allison Janney puts in a terrific performance as her stepmother. The feisty but kindly manicurist with an obsession for dogs is a domestic goddess of the blue-collar variety and a joy to behold. Janney, late of The West Wing, was unlucky not to rack up the film's fifth Oscar nomination as best supporting actress. Jennifer Garner, meanwhile, does an admirable job of turning a crude caricature of the baby-hungry thirtysomething into a rounded, credible person.
Though female characters dominate, the men are hardly afterthoughts. Michael Cera is beautifully understated in the role of Juno's bewildered boyfriend. As Juno says of herself, he's having to deal with things way beyond his maturity level. This is one learning experience you wouldn't wish on anyone. Kids having kids: not to be recommended. Reitman's movie: a must-see.
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