I narrowly missed Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) and I'm a Charlize Theron fan, so it was a treat to watch her previous movie Young Adult (2011). It's a female version of Just Friends (2005), about a 'young adult' fiction writer, Mavis Gary, who is depressed and lonely in the big city of Minneapolis. In stereotypical feminine fashion she can only correct what's wrong with her own life by ruining that of another woman; she heads back to her home town, Mercury, and steals her ex-lover Buddy (Patrick Wilson) from his wife and recently born baby girl. Just desserts The movie isn't stunning or anything, but it's good to see Charlize in something so spectacularly mundane. It is very funny but so understated that you're constantly wondering whether tragedy is lurking behind the next corner, which leaves you off guard. Is this a romantic comedy or a genuine social drama? The movie is very well directed and exceptionally well cast. The townspeople really look like Southern hicks, while Charlize is clearly the odd one out, with the physique and sexual aura of a superstar. Her performance is wonderfully toned down and her accent is good. It's great to see Theron in something so different. She's done ‘different' things before, like in Monster (2003) and North Country (2005), but this movie isn't depressing. You get to see her without much makeup on; you can see the bags under her eyes, the cracked lips and plucked hairs, but at times she gets tarted up with makeup and alluring clothes. It's also good to see that girls have just as much trouble keeping their lives together and homes prim and proper as we useless men! The teenypopper stuff Mavis writes is really about herself, but idealised, about the prom queen, the confident popular girl, who doesn't care what others think about her and the way she looks. Mavis always wears her boyfriend's t-shirts. Not that the movie is some superficial mush. The theme becomes apparent in her twisted relationship with her old crippled classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), who still hasn't physically or mentally recovered from a hate crime. Because he was a ‘nice' boy, some macho kids thought he was gay and almost beat him to death. He's been living with his sister ever since. This is the classic village beauty-cum-village idiot scenario in European literature, most famously portrayed in the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Esmeralda. Matt's hobby is making action-man figures, which is what he wants to be, someone's hero. She can only open up to Matt and ‘rewards' him in the end for his troubles. Run-arounds Mavis is herself a victim; she had to leave town because of a failed teenage relationship with Buddy (and a miscarriage). There are many contrasting city and village values here, shown in a distinctly American way. You have happy marriages, relatives everywhere, news spreading really fast, home-cooked meals, etc. But that's only skin deep. The hotel receptionist is obnoxious, nosy and always keen to tell Mavis that certain hotel perks are for members only and there's the equally nosy male babysitter. Typical big city outlets like shopping malls and fast food chains encroach on the town. Mavis goes to Mercury on the pretext of a property deal, and when her mother (Jill Eikenberry) finds out, Mavis tells her that her aunt was heartbroken that she didn't cut her in. Her mother drives a luxury car, and property brokers are parasitic capitalists just like the fat-cat landlords. (Mavis drives a mini-cooper and it gets bashed up in Mercury, but it still keeps going, just like Mavis). Small town America is in a state of flux and it ain't pretty, hence the name of the band Buddy's wife is in, ‘Nipple Confusion'. Buddy clearly plays second fiddle to his wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser), and that's something women do not like at all. Mavis heads off to Mercury after doing it with some volunteer-for-the-Third-World dude and she clearly isn't satisfied. It's just great watching women work out their angst, or as Mavis says in her author's voice: “Sometimes in order to heal... a few people have to get hurt." If she represents the feminist of the future I'm all for it!!
