By Dennis Harvey

FATHER, MAY I: Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Rose (Camille
Belle) share a relationship that's both sweet and creepy in
The Ballad of Jack and Rose. Photo by Brigitte Lacombe.

It's useless to complain that white-picket-fence illusions existed mostly because so much was swept under the rug. Those who still think the Cleavers are suitable models for our society don't want to hear any more statistics or moral complexities than would've fit into a 1957 sitcom episode. Beyond drugs and sex, beyond even Jane Fonda, they know the worst thing about the sixties was that it introduced an idea that life decisions could be chosen – not just acquiesced to. For many in the Love Generation, parenthood was a mold to be broken, then reshaped on the potting wheel of one's own evolving consciousness. Hippie-raised kids ever since have tended to turn out outstandingly grounded and self-reliant, or horribly self-centered and victimy.

By strange – dare we say cosmic? – coincidence, two movies opening this week deal with patchouli-soaked alterna-parents and their offspring's seismic struggles toward well-adjustment during that organically fraught period between age 10 and emancipation. This raises the number of films on said subject to at least three (see: Running on Empty). That both new ones are pretty good is even more surprising.

Campbell Scott's Off the Map isn't totally new, having sat on the shelf a couple years while presumably no one thought it commercial enough to release. To be sure, it couldn't cough up a sexy trailer or one-sentence summary to save its life. Back-to-the-landers the Grodins are a hippie-ish trio who've carved out a self-sustaining, eco-friendly if highly isolated existence in the New Mexico desert. This suits down-to-earth Goddessy mom Arlene (Joan Allen), and, despite all her griping, 11-year-old daughter Bo (Valentina de Angelis) is doing all right too. But for some months, dad Charley (Sam Elliott) has been sunk in a depression of unknown origin and nearly catatonic severity.

Since the clan has simply forgotten to file tax forms for, er, about seven years (they subsist on less than $5,000 a year, anyhow), one mid-'70s day the Internal Revenue Service turns up in the human form of new hire William Gibbs (Jim True-Frost), who has a sort of religious experience seeing Arlene gardening in the nude, gets bee-stung, then faints into a three-day fever. Later Charley asks the interloper-cum-new family member if he's ever been depressed himself; "I've never not been depressed" is the reply.

Off the Map is the kind of movie you'd assume was based on a well-reviewed but unpopular literary novel (though in fact Joan Ackerman adapted it from her play); it's rambling, character-based, idiosyncratic, and ultimately satisfying in ways American movies don't try for much anymore. Nothing much "happens" (let alone explodes). But the characters are so instantly likable, familiar, and unpredictable that two hours spent with them passes all too quickly, leaving a fond afterglow.

Writer-director Rebecca Miller's The Ballad of Jack and Rose takes place a decade later, and is accordingly thornier – by Reagan's second term any self-respecting hippie homesteader had a right to be depressed. Titular Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis) and teenage Rose (Camilla Belle) live a hermetically sealed-off life on the site of his onetime island commune, somewhere near the New England shore. Mom left long ago, apparently no great loss. Dad has raised his only child to be a whole-grain princess of misanthropic self-righteousness. Their mutual possessiveness is both sweet and creepy.

But Jack has a weak heart getting weaker. In a rash move he invites mainland girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) to move in with her own drastically different teenage kids – Ryan McDonald as future drag-club MC Rodney, Paul Dano as Leif Garrett-icky hetero sex-machine Thaddius – hoping to create a new "family" Rose can keep after he's croaked. Her response to this invasion is horror, sexual jealousy, and a thirst for revenge that reveals alarmingly cruel, inventive sides to her personality.

Ballad was given a subdued reception at Sundance this year. As just one more offbeat little character drama, it disappointed those expecting Miller's breakout movie, let alone something to brighten an overall blah festival year. It's imperfect for sure – the last reel is a bit overblown, Belle's performance a tad preening (then again, Rose should be semi-insufferable). But the gift Miller demonstrated in Angela and Personal Velocity, for cleanly laying out very interesting characters' complicated issues, still operates at full strength here. The movie is by turns – when not simultaneously – funny, grotesque, and sad. Among many other virtues, it reminds us that Day-Lewis should work a lot more often, and Keener even more than she does. 'Off the Map' and 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose' open Fri/1 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock for show times.