Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Sabrina Doyle
Starring: Jena Malone, Pablo Schreiber, Amelia Borgerding, Chancellor Perry, Trish Evans, Parker Pascoe-Sheppard
When convicts are released from prison they're usually met by family
members at the gates. That's not the case for Wayland (Pablo Schreiber). Well, it is and it isn't. When he walks through the prison gates after
serving a 15 year stretch - exacerbated by his refusal to snitch on his
partner in an armed robbery - he's met not by his blood family, but by a
family of another kind. Waiting astride their hogs are the members of the
outlaw biker gang he ran with prior to his conviction. At that moment
they're the closest Wayland has to family.
The feature debut of writer/director Sabrina Doyle,
Lorelei explores the notion of what makes a family. Is it, as
Wayland initially believes, those who share your blood? Or is a true family
something you find and build for yourself? Is it the bikers who collected a
wad of cash in your absence to express their thanks for keeping shtum? Is it
the pastor (Trish Egan) who gives you a room even though she knows
she'll never make you believe in God? Is it your high school sweetheart and
her three kids?
If family is ultimately the people you rely on, then for Wayland it's all
of the above. Upon returning to his hometown, Wayland immediately reconnects
with Dolores (Jena Malone) for the first time in 15 years. The two
were star-crossed teenagers with a dream of ditching their one-horse Oregon
town for the bright lights of Oregon. With Wayland behind bars and Dolores
raising three kids, that dream never panned out.
The arrival of Wayland back into Dolores' life pulls both of them in
alternate directions. Moving in with his sweetheart, Wayland immediately
takes to domesticity, becoming the father her kids never had. Conversely,
Wayland's presence reminds Dolores of what might have been and the dreams
she gave up, ultimately causing her to flee for LA, leaving the ex-con to
look after her kids.
We recently saw Cate Blanchett pull a similar stunt in Richard Linklater's
Where'd You Go, Bernadette?. But where the heroine of that film felt selfish and entitled for running
out on her family, here we empathise with Dolores' decision. Dolores wears a
brave face throughout, even in moments where she's clearly dying inside. In
one difficult to watch scene she presents her 12-year-old daughter Peri (Amelia Borgerding) with birthday gifts from a thrift store. There's a brutal honesty in how
Peri reacts, scolding her mother for another perceived parental failure,
oblivious to the sacrifices she's made. It's only when left alone in a
faeces covered motel room she's expected to clean as part of her job that
she finally breaks down.
Schreiber and Malone are magnificent in roles that require very different
emotional trajectories. The former goes from a sullen nihilist to a man who
sees hope in a future with his surrogate family, while the latter only seems
to lose hope. They're both upstaged by Borgerding, the sort of expressive
child star you could imagine being snapped up by Spielberg. The scene where
Peri gets her first period in her mother's absence is a piece of
staggeringly good acting.
Doyle hails from England, and here she transfers the sort of kitchen sink
story that might normally play out on a British council estate to what might
be disparagingly labelled an American white trash milieu. There's a sense
that Doyle is mixing heartfelt insight with a sense of working class America
gleaned from country songs. Wayland and Dolores could easily have stepped
out of a Springsteen song, but they feel wonderfully alive to the viewer, if
not to themselves. There are some beautiful, subtle bits of character
observation, such as Wayland's naivete when it comes to female issues,
having never been around women as an adult. Or his awkwardness around a
Black hardware store owner, having likely spent the last 15 years viewing
anyone with a different skin colour as the enemy.
The best movies leave us wondering what's next for their protagonists.
Lorelei leaves us feeling that Wayland, Dolores and her kids
are facing a long, hard road. But if they face it as a family, they just
might make it.
