October 9, 2002

OPRAH WINFREY DOESN'T have a book club anymore, but for past selections, her mark of approval (some might say stigma) lingers. Winfrey so loved Janet Fitch's White Oleander that her famous pipes graced the book-on-tape version. But while all the classic Oprah elements are in place – female protagonist overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds and ultimately finds inner peace – there's a downbeat quality to both the book and new film that, thankfully, avoids making cotton candy out of hard-won triumph of the human spirit.

Even if you haven't read Fitch's Oprah-approved novel, the film version of White Oleander is worth taking note of: it's a "women's picture" that centers not on romantic entanglements but on relationships between mothers and daughters, and it takes a different approach than recent, similarly-themed films like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Lovely and Amazing. Oleander eschews the expected healing-power-of-family message, instead tracing the tale of a troubled teenager who can only heal by breaking free of, and leaving behind, her controlling, self-absorbed parent.

Beautiful, cool blond artist Ingrid Magnussen (Michelle Pfeiffer) lives life according to her own rules, never giving an inch – even when it comes to her daughter, Astrid (newcomer Alison Lohman, who's like a more fragile, less spunky Kirsten Dunst). When Ingrid's latest catch casually breaks her heart, the inner Viking of a woman horrified at herself for showing weakness takes over. With the center of her universe suddenly doing hard time for murder, Astrid is shuttled off to a succession of foster homes. Each new life brings a deliberately, wildly different new "mom" who places her imprint indelibly on Astrid – for better and worse – lessening Ingrid's power even as she clings to her daughter through letters and tense jailhouse visits.

Astrid's first foster mother, brassy former topless dancer Starr (Robin Wright Penn), shares Ingrid's fair hair and her hidden capacity for violence; she's also a born-again Jesus freak who doesn't always practice what she preaches. Dutifully, Astrid adapts to her surroundings by donning slutty, Starr-approved outfits and agreeing to be baptized. In these early stages of separation, Ingrid's advice – "Don't attach yourself to everyone who gives you attention" – seems reasonable, especially considering Starr's debatable morals and fashion sense. But Ingrid's own philosophies, in particular her "I regret nothing" stance on what she believes was a fully justifiable crime, strike Astrid – who has never questioned her mother's perfection before – as objectionable.

Pfeiffer is well-cast as a woman described by author Fitch as having "beauty like the edge of a very sharp knife"; she gives Ingrid a cold-blooded quality that becomes particularly evident when Astrid reluctantly brings her favorite foster mother, Claire (Renée Zellweger), to visit. With the precision of a spitting cobra, a jealous Ingrid zeroes in on Claire's weakness: "Astrid must be a great comfort to you," Ingrid purrs, "... since you can't have kids of your own." In private, Astrid begs her mother not to screw up the happiest home she's had in years. "What are you going to learn from a woman like that?" Ingrid says, smoothly dismissing her daughter's desperate hunger for love and security. She'd rather see her daughter in the worst kind of foster home hell, she adds, than see her be a daughter to "Poor Claire." When tragedy follows, Astrid blames Ingrid's poison, and the relationship is strained to near nonexistence.

Director Peter Kosminsky, whose previous directing experience includes several made-for-British-television dramas, gives Oleander a realistic, unglamorous quality, using handheld cameras for scenes of conflict – though he could've kept a tighter leash on the voice-overs, which are intended to capture the poetic prose of the book and sometimes drone on without succeeding. White Oleander's thick application of Lifetime channel-style drama – the script is by Mary Agnes Donoghue, who also adapted Beaches – is offset by its solid cast, in particular the understated Lohman and the icy Pfeiffer. And it's to the film's credit that the happy, uplifting, Oprah-style moment of closure between mother and child, which had seemed a certainty, never really comes.

The moment that does come, however, is one that anyone who's seen the blond-on-blond poster for White Oleander might anticipate. It's only when Astrid moves in with her final foster mother, Rena (Svetlana Efremova) – a flea market-obsessed bargain hunter who puts Astrid right to work and who is, not coincidentally, a brunette – that the turmoil in her life begins to settle. In a purely visual statement that's not found in Fitch's novel, Astrid copies her new guardian by dying her flaxen hair brown, and – for what it's worth – it's this final transformation that seems to give her the courage to demand freedom from Ingrid's grasp.