“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“Can I come?”
These are the first words the audience hears. That’s the film – a picture of loneliness and longing. Tobe Sommers (Evan Rachel Wood) and her little brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin) exist in the world without living. Each longs for something better, but behind their expressive eyes, and everyday motions, there’s a resignation. For them, this is… life. Watching the Sommers go about their daily lives is like watching a sort of slow death. We know where they’re heading – or not. Tobe’s feisty nature doesn’t open doors of optimism but rather offers glimpses of the loss about to follow. Like the opening lines of the movie, the characters are going nowhere, and their every action to rebel against this moves them closer towards tragedy.
When the soft-spoken Harlan (Edward Norton) enters into the lives of Tobe and Lonnie, the viewer recognises him as not their saviour, but the catalyst for destruction. As Harlan’s simple ways charms and disarms both Tobe and Lonnie, writer/director David Jacobson leaves enough hints of the danger for viewers to feel constantly uneasy. Scenes of intense intimacy are twinged with a foreboding menace, as Norton deftly switches from unassuming cowboy to unhinged, lost soul.
Evan Rachel Wood fills every scene with such an intense believability, it’s heartbreaking. Though the younger of the pair, it is Wood’s Tobe who recognises the limitations of her and Harlan’s relationship. Though his sweet presence and devoted affections liberate her, she knows their union can be nothing more than temporary – because it’s a shit, shit world out there.
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