Juno

Kris and I both loved this, its acid-tongued stream of one-liners a tart complement to its openhearted appreciation of all characters. Every performer in this film is pitch-perfect, special mention for Ellen Page who is as vivid and lovely and moving as everyone says, and has as good an ear for her lines as the always-remarkable Michael Cera (who seems to have an uncanny ability to find whole new symphonies of nuance in the blank-faced befuddlement of the poor guy to whom things happen).

I was most impressed by how the film, even as it turned into the skid toward certain generic expectations, confounded the tendency to lay blame or find a convenient villain or foil.

[Minor spoliers ahead]

I think my favorite thing about it was the potential adoptive parents. The initially retentive Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and the potentially cretinous Mark (Jason Bateman) are both given room to develop, in some few fine short scenes, far more depth to characterizations of gendered baby-philia and -phobia so recently mined in the funny but less complicated Knocked Up. There’s a whole film inside their relationship I wanted to see more of, but we saw just the right amount.

And did I say Page was great? She’s great.

This film really worked. Kris picked up on its tonal and thematic relations to the great The Snapper, and the film sealed her read with an explicit allusion (“Thundercats go!”) at the end. She reminded me of “Juno and the Paycock,” which Roddy Doyle was implicitly revising, and it’s nice to see this Juno tipping its hat to such influences.

I’d also love to think more about this in relation to Knocked, which I liked a lot but it’s nowhere near as strong as this. Then again, there seems to have emerged in the last few weeks a consensus that the earlier film was more sexist, this latest more empowering… I’m not sure I see that, or not exactly. K.U. seems to be full of people who inflate themselves, and the film’s more piercing, aggressive humor seems about deflating their [our] pretensions. (I think the film *is* quite generous, even-handed in its mockery, its attention to gender dynamics.) Juno on the other hand, is about people none of whom are really sure about themselves, but they are all fairly sure about their relationships with one another. Conflict, such as it is, even in the most surprising disruption of a relationship, is pretty compassionate–no one out to simply hurt others. For all of its smartass wordplay, it’s about the most forgiving and loving portrait of family around. (And I absolutely mean that as a compliment.)

Well, whatever. Whether it becomes fodder for some debate better-defined than the issues I’ve raised above, I’d say go see the film–you’ll dig it.