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Bonneville Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG (for some mild language and innuendo) Genre: Comedy, Drama Theater release: February 29, 2008 by SenArt Directed by: Michel Gondry Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes Cast: Jessica Lange (Arvilla), Kathy Bates (Margene), Joan Allen (Carol), Tom Skerritt (Emmett), Christine Baranski (Francine) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

The operative words are "Be Kind."

Oh boy, a movie about a 1966 Bonneville convertible! That's the car my sisters and I learned to drive on. Ours was silver with a black interior, purchased brand-new off the showroom floor with every possible extra. We called it the Batmobile. It's in retirement at Louisa's place now, but I like to think of it as resting up.

I went to see the cinematic Bonneville filled with hopeful nostalgia, but, I regret to say, it's a really crummy movie. Though the car appears in the film, it's mere eye candy for a story about three middle-aged women ("middle," that is, if you know lots of 120-year-olds). They—Arvilla (Jessica Lange), Margene (Kathy Bates), and Carol (Joan Allen)—are using the spiffy vehicle to make a road trip from Pocatello, Idaho to Santa Barbara, California. Though road-trip movies have been overdone, it could still have been enjoyable, especially as a comedy retaining down-to-earth, wisecracking Bates. But Bonneville is also burdened with a serious plot element, one that feels contrived and manipulative.

Jessica Lange as Arvilla

It's that Arvilla has just lost her husband, Joe. After his retirement, Joe became an adventurous traveler, and began taking Arvilla around the world. Death came while they were on a trip to Borneo. As the story opens we see Arvilla coming home in a taxi, clutching a container of Joe's ashes. She had made him a promise to scatter them, the where and how left unspecified.

But Joe has a daughter from his first marriage, Francine, who feels strongly that he should be buried next to her mother, in the family plot in California. She offers Arvilla a deal: turn over the ashes by the time of the memorial service next week, and I won't sell this house. (The house was left to Francine in a pre-Arvilla will, and in a theoretical later amendment that can't be found.)

Since the unseen Joe looms large throughout the film, what kind of guy was he? Francine tells Arvilla that perhaps Joe never made a new will, since there were many things he said he'd do but never got around to, like moving to where he could be part of his grandchildren's lives. Later we learn that Joe had programmed Arvilla's phone so that a call from Francine would trigger the sound of a screaming raptor. Pretty hostile behavior, and there's no obvious reason why Francine deserves it. Apparently she is Joe's only child.

Joan Allen as Carol

There's also something creepy in the fact that Arvilla has placed his ashes in a pottery jar Joe purchased on one of his travels, one that had originally held the hearts of human sacrifices. Later, Margene recalls the time Joe gave her a gift of a shrunken head. My guess is that a shrunken head makes a hilarious gift only if it's not Caucasian. If it were, it would be too obvious that you are holding the decapitated head of a young woman, say, or a child, or even an old man like Joe.

The film gives away this alternate view completely against its will. We are herded toward thinking that Francine must be in the wrong, because she's uptight and wealthy. (How wealthy? One day we see her and her husband playing tennis next to the porch of their home; the next day, the view from the porch shows a swimming pool. Wow.) Her father is presented as her opposite, an adventurous free spirit who won't be chained to the expectations of narrow, proper people.

Kathy Bates as Margene

Does that sound familiar? It's the same narrative Baby Boomers internalized decades ago, when "narrow, proper people" meant their parents. Now that those foils are fast disappearing, Boomers are swinging around to paste the label on their children. (Another Jessica Lange film, Big Fish, preaches the same sermon.) Once a rebel, always a rebel, even if you have to invent someone to rebel against.

From the moment that Arvilla and her friends Margene and Carol hit the road, I knew exactly what was going to happen [SPOILER ALERT]: Arvilla would go ahead and scatter Joe's ashes, and fool Francine by handing her a jar containing ashes of some other kind. I didn't foresee exactly what those ashes would be, and it is a moment of piercing cruelty—if you see Francine as a real, grieving person, that is. But Bonneville is determined you'll see things only from its jerry-rigged perspective.

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