with Anna Paquin (X-Men, True Blood), Matt Damon (Invictus, Hereafter, True Grit, We Brought a Zoo, The Informant!), Matthew Broderick, Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers, The Kids Are All Right, Shutter Island), Kieran Culkin, Matt Bush, Jean Reno (Léon), Allison Janney (The Help, The Hours), Olivia Thirlby, Rosemarie DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married)
After witnessing a fatal bus crash, teenager Lisa believes she inadvertently played a part in the tragedy. As she tries to deal with her feelings, Lisa becomes emotionally abusive to those around her — and to herself.
How to start. First the positives, this movie is an original portrait of adolescence entering the adulthood. Lisa is opiniated, thinks she gets the world in a better way than anyone, smart-ass with all what comes with it. When something real happens to her, the emptiness of her world becomes striking, she needs to connect with the people that were affected by the accident, realizing they did not care as much, they didn't relate in the same way, and in a way, they reacted with what their situation was at their present time, while she didn't have anything else than a strong responsibility and tons of feeling she cannot canalize. In her search of justice, it becomes clearer than her action are driven by innocence, except that everything not related to the case becomes a way for her to get attention, to shape her life into something more dramatic, existential, shocking, involving others in a journey that she doesn't understand herself, except that instead of being constructive, it destroy her self, her identity she thought was uninteresting.
The dialogues are amazing, the contrast between this movie and the vast majority of movies made today is the quality of the vocabulary, the choice of words, the literate way of communicating and misunderstanding which is such a big part of our life and conflict, which in most movies doesn't have any place. The adult characters are shown quite all evolved, or think they are until they break, facing the innocent voice or contact of adolescence, showing how adulthood is perhaps as complex as adolescence, except with more tragic experience that lead the way to more complex reactions. There are amazing dialogues and monologues, most often lead by Jeannie Berlin, the cast is actually impeccable and Lisa (Anna Paquin) is perfectly irritable, perhaps a bit predictable.
Finally, what was an interesting point, which was for Lisa to have reached a truth and an ability to fight a real cause that no one sees because she fights everything else in the same manner looking like she created her own drama and discrediting her to the eyes of adults, this point becomes a caricature that is so obvious to the eyes of the viewer that it makes the movie fall a little bit flat. Too bad for a movie that has such a nuance and sensitivity.
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