Day 184: The Little Girl Who Lived Down The Lane

A lonely 13 year old will do anything to protect her home and her secret.

Rynn (Jodie Foster) is very mature for her age and she is well educated. She studies at home which serves to isolate her further from the people in the village. When asked about it by the boy she trusts, she says that at school you are told what to think and don’t get a chance to develop as yourself. That’s definitely true but I think she did want to go to school. The only problem would’ve been that kids there would’ve asked too many questions and might have wanted to come ‘round. She spent all her time trying to keep her secret and it would’ve been far too stressful having any sort of friendship with anyone. After a local boy helps her she tells him everything. Within a day or two (it’s difficult to know the exact timeline) he tells her that he loves her and she asks him to never leave. The events in the film spiralled out of control pretty rapidly and so it would make sense that their romance would be fast as well. Especially since he helped her bury some bodies. They’re pretty much joined for life.

Jodie Foster has such a serious face and she was really good in this role. So much happens in such a short space of time and I think it was a good idea to do that because it helped to focus on the stress and fear that Rynn would’ve felt and why she was pushed to act the way she did.

7/10

Day 154: Carnage

Following a fight, the parents of the two children involved meet to discuss what happened and how best to go about resolving it. They start off as overly polite and attempt to remain adult about things but it soon descends into chaos after being stuck together in the same room for a while.

Having never been in a fight, I’ve never had to experience the sheer awkwardness of parents attempting to be sensible about dealing with it. There’s a part of them that’s obviously furious that it would happen and that their child is hurt, but there’s also a part that realises that it was the children who did it and the adults have to behave in a polite way. Penelope (Jodie Foster) is clearly furious that her son was beaten up but she also tries to rise above it and see things in a more impartial way. Her attempts at being the bigger person, however, fail right off the bat due to her inability to stop making little remarks at every available opportunity. It’s clear that she doesn’t have the support of her husband and that she forced him into the meeting; he starts off doing exactly what she wants but in the end, he doesn’t actually care about any of it. The other mother, Nancy (Kate Winslet), tries to be accommodating to Penelope and Michael (John C Reilly) because she knows her son has done wrong but she doesn’t care about resolving it in a healthy way, she just wants it over with. After continual provocation from Penelope, she lashes out and tries to lessen her son’s responsibility in the incident. Her husband, Alan (Christoph Waltz), couldn’t care less about any of this as he is completely preoccupied by his work. During the time they spend together, he continually answers his phone in the middle of everybody talking and as the film progresses everyone becomes more irritated by it. In the end, nothing is resolved and everybody has said and done things that they will no doubt later regret.

I kept comparing this film to ‘Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ despite them not having similar storylines. The set-up is similar in that there are 4 people and they are mainly confined to one place and they all get progressively drunker and more aggressive. Carnage is the poorer of the two, so I’d suggest watching the other if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s not that it was bad, but it was all done too quickly. I understand that they were all on the edge anyway and that it certainly wouldn’t have taken them long to topple into anger but I would’ve preferred if it had been drawn out. The film itself is only 76 minutes long and it does do well in that short amount of time but it might’ve benefitted from taking some time to build the tension.

7/10