Junebug

A beautiful and sophisticated Chicago art dealer, Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz of Thirteen Ghosts, Mansfield Park), and her boyfriend Johnny (Alessandro Nivola of Laurel Canyon and Jurassic Park III) trek into the Southeast so she can attempt to convince a backwoods folk artist to let her represent him.

While there, they visit her family, which has many of the stereotypical traits we associate with small-town America. The supporting cast in this movie is great with a strong-willed simple-minded mother, a quiet and gentle father, an angry disturbed brother, and his good-hearted airhead wife Ashley played by Amy Adams in a performance will no doubt be opening doors for her all over the film industry.

This is a city mouse/country mouse story in which the sophisticated Madelaine must find ways to relate to people who find it almost unbelievable that she was born in Japan and is well read.

She means well and puts up with Ashley's brutal motormouthing, the brother's brooding hostility (which it turns out is founded on his lust for her), and the subsurface contempt felt for her by her boyfriend's mother who, apparently, has seen it all (all that really matters anyway) and thus knows all.

A subplot develops when the folk artist threatens to leave her for a New York dealer, forcing her to decide how to divide her time and attention between this family whose hearts she sincerely wants to win and her financial interests as a dealer.

Everything comes to a head in a crisis when birth time arrives for Ashley. Lots of things get sorted out, Madeleine's values come into sharper focus, Johnny sees her more clearly just as she has, through seeing him interact with his family and community, learned much more about him. The other characters (with the exception of the possibly mentally-disturbed brother) become more understandable as well.

The last scene as Madeleine and Johnny return home in their car may seem a little weird and may run counter to what one might expect, but perhaps that's one of the glories of this little masterpiece of the slice-of-life style.